DETAILED ACTION
Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
Priority
Applicant's claim of priority under 35 U.S.C.§371 as a national stage entry of PCT/RO2021/050005 filed April 4, 2021, and which claims priority to Romanian application 2020-00266 filed May 18, 2020, is hereby acknowledged.
Election/Restriction
Applicant’s election, without traverse, of Group I (claims 1-6) in the reply filed on September 17, 2025, to the restriction requirement dated August 11, 2025, is hereby acknowledged.
Accordingly, claims 1-6 have been examined in the instant Office action whereas claims 7-10, which were drawn to drawn to a nonelected invention, have been canceled by Applicant in the present application but have been filed in a continuing application.
Claim Objections
Claim 1, and claims 2-6 that depend therefrom, are objected to because of the following informalities: each claim can only have one sentence and one period punctuation mark. Independent claim 1 has three sentences/periods.
Appropriate correction is required by Applicant in a reply to this action.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
The following is a quotation of the appropriate paragraphs of 35 U.S.C. 102 that form the basis for the rejections under this section made in this Office action:
A person shall be entitled to a patent unless –
(a)(1) the claimed invention was patented, described in a printed publication, or in public use, on sale or otherwise available to the public before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 103 which forms the basis for all obviousness rejections set forth in this Office action:
A patent for a claimed invention may not be obtained, notwithstanding that the claimed invention is not identically disclosed as set forth in section 102, if the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art are such that the claimed invention as a whole would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which the claimed invention pertains. Patentability shall not be negated by the manner in which the invention was made.
Claims 1-3 and 6 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. §103 as unpatentable over Nick (US 2006/0112639 A1 to Nick et al., published June 1, 2006) and Wolf (Derwent Abstract of CA 2306889 A to Wolf et al., published October 6, 1998). This Canadian Application claims priority to German Application DE 19747324 A, which was cited in the International Search Report submitted by Applicant in its Information Disclosure Statement filed March 22, 2023.
Nick discloses a reactor and a process for the conversion of heterogeneous organic waste material, such as trash, sewage or biomass, to commercially salable materials, wherein the process provides a maximum energy conversion from the organic material, high volume consumption of the organic feed material, less pollution of gaseous products and solid residuals for disposal are minimal and non-hazardous, wherein the conversion is accomplished by combining anaerobic gasification and pyrolysis of the feed organic material to provide syngas, wherein the syngas gas is a mixture of hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide with small amounts of carbon dioxide and nitrogen (abstract; Figures 1 and 2, [0001]; [0006]; [0010]; Table III; Table V; claims 1-3 of Nick). The gasification is accomplished by using a hot water (steam)-laden driver gas generated by a controlled combustion of recycle fuel gases wherein recycle feeds can be mixed with an externally-derived natural gas or other fresh fuel, in a self-contained burner that provides a very high temperature, wet gas to the base of the shaft reactor that flows upward through the descending solid feed, thereby providing the thermal and chemical driving forces for the gasification and pyrolysis reactions ([0011]; [0012])..
Nick further discloses that the process can take place in a single gravity-driven moving bed (downward flow of solids) shaft reactor with an updraft gas flow, where the solid feed material is fed to the top of the reactor and molten slag is removed from the bottom, and wherein the overburden of several feet of solids above the reaction zone has several basic functions: it keeps the reaction zone in a stable position; filters out pyrolytically generated particulates (soot); and acts as a direct contact counter-current heat exchange medium with the hot gases providing convective heat transfer to the solids ([0012] to [0016]) The reaction process can be run in two modes: with fresh fuel from offsite exclusively used to generate the thermal driver gas and a "self-sustaining" mode with 25-100% of the product gas recycled as fuel to the gas combustors to provide the thermal driver gas for the pyrolysis and gasification reactions ([0017] to [0019]). The reactor walls can comprise stainless steel ([0320]; claim 18 of Nick).
Nick also discloses that the process above the pyrolysis zone, functions to accept and dry the feed plus remove the product gas wherein heat conduction from the lower bed areas, and convection from the upwardly flowing gas, drives off all of the surface water associated with the waste feed as well as substantial portion of that chemically bonded or adsorbed inside the waste components, wherein this gas is removed by venting in a manner consistent with feed material free-falling to the top of the solids bead such that inadvertent loss of solids into the gas vents is minimized ([0084; [0211]). The process can have continuous flow capability, particularly, continuous thermo-chemical conversion of organic materials ([0066]); [0268]).
Nick does not disclose introducing its gasification agent (air, oxygen or steam) in a vortex flow as recited in present independent claim 1
However, Wolf teaches a process and an apparatus for generating fuel, synthesis and reduction gas wherein the reactor comprises a combined fuel burner, a combustion chamber, an entrained flow gasifier, a heat compensating duct as well as a water bath, in which case the combined fuel burner is provided with means for the stoichiometric combustion of gaseous low temperature carbonization products via vortex means flinging the liquid components towards the combustion chamber wall (abstract). The pulverized fuel can react under endothermal conditions with a gasifying agent from the combustion chamber into the gasification gas, wherein the residual coke being so swirled that it lowers the temperature of the combustion chamber wall below the slag melting temperature due to convective heat adsorption, thereby reducing the temperature of the combustion wall, and wherein a protective layer is from the solidified slag on the interior wall of the combustion chamber (abstract).
Consequently, it would have been obvious to a person skilled in the art to at the time of the filing of the claimed invention, to combine the gasification agent with the post-pyrolysis phases/results in the gasification reactor using a vortex flow so that it lowers the temperature of the gasification chamber and the slag/results forms a protective layer on the wall below the slag melting temperature due to heat transfer, to provide a more efficient heat/energy saving process, in accordance with Wolf.
Thus, the instant claims are unpatentable over Nick.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 4 and 5 are objected to as dependent upon a rejected base claim but would be allowable if rewritten in independent form including all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims (and also overcoming the claim objections presented, supra, in paragraph #5).
Nick and Wolf do not teach the contact surface changes, or the pyrolysis reactor having 2-8 separation planes, in accordance with present dependent claims 4 and 5, respectively.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to JOHN J FIGUEROA whose telephone number is (571)272-8916. The examiner can normally be reached on 8:30 am -6:00 pm.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, JOSEPH DEL SOLE can be reached on 571-272-1098. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/JOHN J FIGUEROA/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 1763
January 12, 2026