Supercritical fluid cleaning of banknotes and secure documents
AssigneeSpectra Systems Corporation
InventorNabil M. Lawandy
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A method and system for cleaning a secure instrument, such as a banknote, including a substrate, visual data and a security feature, including exposing the secure instrument to a supercritical fluid at a temperature and a pressure and for a duration sufficient to clean the substrate and not compromise the security feature and the visual data, wherein to clean the substrate includes to remove one or more substances from the substrate into the supercritical fluid. The substances removed from the substrate may include contaminants, dirt, sebum and pathogens.
Claims38
A method for cleaning a banknote including a substrate, visual data and a security feature, comprising:
- exposing the banknote to a supercritical fluid at a temperature and a pressure and for a duration sufficient to clean the substrate and not compromise the security feature and the visual data;
- wherein to clean the substrate includes to remove one or more substances from the substrate into the supercritical fluid.
A method for cleaning a plurality of banknotes, each banknote including a substrate, visual data and a security feature, comprising:
- sorting the banknotes based on one or more predetermined criteria;
- exposing the banknotes to a supercritical fluid at a temperature and a pressure and for a duration sufficient to clean the substrates and not compromise the security features and the visual data of the banknotes;
- wherein to clean the substrates includes to remove one or more substances from the substrates into the supercritical fluid.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.