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.
The factual inquiries for establishing a background for determining obviousness under 35 U.S.C. 103 are summarized as follows:
1. Determining the scope and contents of the prior art.
2. Ascertaining the differences between the prior art and the claims at issue.
3. Resolving the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art.
4. Considering objective evidence present in the application indicating obviousness or nonobviousness.
Claim(s) 1 and 6 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Izumi et. al (US 2022/0243914 A1) in view of Okamura et. al (US 2012/0015802 A1).
With respect to claim 1 Izumi discloses a flare stack1 comprising: a main burner [reference character 23] to which ammonia is supplied [see paragraph 0038]; a pilot burner [reference character 14] to which ammonia is supplied [via tank 12a]; a hydrogen gas generator [reference character 13] that is provided upstream of the pilot burner in a flow of ammonia and that decomposes the ammonia supplied to the pilot burner into reformed fuel including hydrogen [see paragraph 0054].
Izumi does not disclose that the hydrogen generator is a first catalyst or a heater that heats the first catalyst.
Okamura discloses a hydrogen producing ammonia decomposition catalyst that includes a catalyst [reference characters 1 and 2] that decomposes ammonia, where a first portion of the catalyst [reference character 1] ingests a mixture of ammonia and oxygen [reference character 3] and combusts a portion of the ammonia to produce a flow of hot ammonia [reference character 4], the hot ammonia mixture is fed into an ammonia decomposition catalyst [reference character 2] where the ammonia is decomposed into a mixture of hydrogen and nitrogen [see paragraphs 0105 and 0198-0201].
It would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art at the time of the filing date of the invention to modify the system taught by Izumi by replacing the reformer of Izumi with the catalyst taught by Okamura because the reformer is a “plasma type hydrogen generator” [paragraph 0054 of Izumi] which requires a significant source of external power, whereas the catalyst taught by Okamura self-heats and therefore requires minimum external power/heat [see Abstract of Okamura].
With respect to claim 6 the combination of Izumi and Okamura disclose the flare stack according to claim 12 [see Fig. 1 of Izumi and the rejection for claim 1]
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 2-5 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.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to VIVEK K SHIRSAT whose telephone number is (571)272-3722. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 9:00AM-5:20AM.
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/VIVEK K SHIRSAT/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3762
1 A flare is defined as “[a] burner consisting essentially of a vertical tube through which flow combustible waste gases…where they are ignited. The burner may be shrouded by a cylindrical outer tube. The flame at outlet is termed a flare” [Atkins, T., & Escudier, M. (2013). flare burner. In A Dictionary of Mechanical Engineering.: Oxford University Press. Retrieved 16 Jul. 2026]. Since Izumi discloses a vertical tube [reference character 4] through which flows a potential waste gas (ammonia) and at the outlet of which a flame is ejected [se paragraph 0077] the structure taught by Izumi can fairly be interpreted as meeting the definition of a flare.
2 See footnote 1.
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