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 .
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
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.
Claim 1 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Zhang et al (CN 114622219 A) in view of Sasaki (JP 2009-155666 A) and Baltrucki et al (US 2006/0118428 A1), with evidence from Taruya et al (US 8,721,867 B2).
Zhang et al teach (see figs. 1-3 and paragraphs [0050]-[0052], [0059]-[0061], [0068], and [0069]) of machine translation) a water electrolysis apparatus comprising a water electrolysis stack (10) in which water electrolysis cells are laminated (the stack and plural laminated cells are implicitly shown by the schematic used by Zhang et al, see esp. figs. 1 and 8 of Taruya et al), a water supply side path (23) including a pipe through which water is supplied to the water electrolysis stack (10), a hydrogen side pipe (note in paragraph [0068] that Zhang et al teach duplicating the gas separation module (50) for each of the oxygen side and the hydrogen side), a water recirculation path (“second water inlet of the pure water supply module 30”) including a pipe through which water from the hydrogen side path is returned to the water supply side path, wherein each of the water supply side path (23) and the water recirculation path (through pure water tank (31)) included a conductivity meter (C1, C2) connected to a controller, wherein the controller performs control to drain water from the system based on a measured value of the conductivity meters.
Zhang et al further teach that the water recirculation path included a valve (drain connected to pipes 61 and 63) controlled by the controller to open based on a measured value of the conductivity meter.
Thus, the instantly claimed invention differs from the disclosure of Zhang et al by including a valve for draining the water only in the water recirculation path, there being no drain valve in the water supply side path.
Sasaki teaches (see page 5 of the machine translation) that pure water having a low conductivity (less than 5 μS/cm) is desired to avoid impurities becoming adsorbed onto the membrane which increased the resistance of the membrane thereby increasing the cell voltage. Baltrucki et al (see figs. 2, 4, and 5, paragraphs [0023], [0033]) providing a conductivity sensor in a water supply path to monitor the water quality to prevent impure water (i.e. water having conductivity above 5 μS/cm) from being provided to the electrolysis cells to prevent damage.
The totality of the prior art, including Zhang et al, as well as Sasaki and Baltrucki et al, teach that the electrolysis cells could be damaged when impure water was flowed through the electrolysis cells and that the impurities adsorbed onto the membrane thereby increasing the cell voltage.
Therefore, there was a suggestion in the prior art to not send impure water into the water electrolysis cells of Zhang et al, such that it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to have added a second drain valve to the system of Zhang et al in the water supply side path downstream from the conductivity meter (C1) since the water passing by the conductivity meter (C1) would have otherwise passed through the electrolysis cells before reaching the drain valve, which would have resulted in damage to the electrolysis cells or an undesired increase in cell voltage due to adsorbance of impurities.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 2 and 3 are objected to as being 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.
The following is a statement of reasons for the indication of allowable subject matter: the closest prior art is considered Zhang et al as described above. However, the prior art did not recognize that the water supply side path control should occur when the water electrolysis cells were not operation and that the water recirculation path control should occur when the water electrolysis cells were in operation. The prior art taught maintaining control using both conductivity sensors at all times. The invention of claim 2 requires the controller to act in the claimed fashion, which has been held to require programming or other means to be taught in the prior art in order to be found obvious; see MPEP § 2114.IV. Since the prior art lacks such a teaching, the invention of claim 2 is found non-obvious.
Conclusion
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/HARRY D WILKINS III/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 1794
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