A Study on Thermal-flow Characteristics in a Reaction Chamber of Gas Scrubber Designed Based on Similitude Theory

Abstract

Objectives A gas scrubber which is normally composed of a reaction chamber and a scrubbing part is being used to purify the waste gases from the processes. An efficient design of the reaction chamber is essential in a scrubber system due to the overall operation stability and high destruction & removal efficiency (DRE). The purpose of the study was to obtain the basic design data of deriving the improved design by analyzing a small-scale model of the commercial reaction chamber. Methods In the present study, the small-scale model of the simplified the reaction chamber was designed and fabricated based on similitude theory, and the thermal-flow characteristics were numerically analyzed inside the chamber using commercial Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) code. Results and Discussion Based on two dimensionless numbers for the geometric similarity and three dimensionless numbers for the kinematic similarity, the small-scale model of the reaction chamber was designed and fabricated. From the numerical and experimental results, thermal-flow characteristics such as temperature gradient and thermal efficiency were evaluated. To validate the numerical method applied herein, the numerical results of the temperature at specific monitoring points were compared with the experimental data. The average error rates (2.5~9.8%) between them was shown and the numerical results of temperature distribution are in good agreement with the experimental data. Conclusions In this study, the small-scale model, which was designed and manufactured based on similarity theory was analyzed. From these results, the basic design data for drawing the improved design ideas were acquired The results of this study can be used as basic data for analyzing thermal and flow characteristics in a variety of scrubber systems. Key words: Semiconductor Industry, Gas Scrubber, Reaction Chamber, Similitude Theory, Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD)