In recent semiconductor manufacturing clean rooms, air washers are used to remove airborne gaseous contaminants such as NH3, SOx and organic gases from outdoor air introduced into clean room. In order to improve the gas removal performance of the air washers, a hot water contact heat exchanger can be installed upstream of an air washer, heating and humidifying the incoming outdoor air before entering the air washer. In the present study, an experiment was carried out to examine closely the improvement of gas removal efficiency by the insertion of the hot water contact heat exchanger. The experiment showed that the gas removal efficiency was increased by the water vapor condensation effect.

In recent models of semiconductor manufacturing clean rooms, air washers are used to remove airborne gaseous contaminants such as NH3, SOx and organic gases introduced from outdoor air into clean room. Meanwhile, there is a large quantity of exhaust air produced from clean room. It is desirable to recover heat from exhaust air and use it to reheat outdoor air. In the present study, an experiment was conducted to investigate heat recovery, particle collection, and gas removal in a heat recovery type air washer system for semiconductor manufacturing clean rooms.