Removal Characteristics of Gaseous Contaminants by a Wet Scrubber with Different Packing Materials

Wet scrubber is widely used to remove toxic gaseous contaminants in various industries such as semi-conductor industry, display manufacturing industry and so on. In this study, to optimize a packed bed scrubber as one of typical wet scrubber size while keeping its performance, four different packing materials were investigated at different air flow rates, liquid-gas ratios and pH values. Ammonia, hydrochloric acid and hydrofluoric acid were used as test gases to characterize the scrubber performance. Gas removal efficiency increased as the packing size decreased, which resulted in the increase of specific surface area. The increase of air flow rate led to the decrease of gas removal efficiency, while the increase of liquid-gas ratio led to the increase of gas removal efficiency. For the case of NH3 gas, lower pH, and for the cases of HCl and HF, higher pH contributed to higher gas removal efficiency. Gas removal efficiency of a wet scrubber increased in the order of HCl< NH3 < HF according to its water solubility.