Fine Dust Treatment for High-tech
Manufacturers

Air pollution is a local, pan-European and hemispheric issue. Among the main air pollutants fine dust plays an essential role as it is incredibly small and the exposure to particulate matter can have detrimental health effects, especially respiratory problems.
Obvious sources for fine dust are forest fires, cars and trucks as well as construction sites. But also chemical reactions of gases, as they occur in many industrial processes form particulate matter.  This is the case in semiconductor, photovoltaics, LED and Flat Panel Display manufacturing processes which are characterised by highly complex, multistage manufacturing processes that produce harmful waste gases.

Par­tic­u­late Mat­ter from Waste Gas Treatment

Many waste gas abate­ment pro­cesses re­quire the ex­trac­tion of dusts. Dusts from waste gases are very fine solid particles that can re­main sus­pen­ded in the air over ex­ten­ded peri­ods of time. Particles with a dia­meter of more than ten mi­cro­met­ers are con­sidered coarse dust and are caught by the nasal hairs or mu­cous mem­branes of the nasopharyn­geal cav­ity. Dusts of particles smal­ler than ten mi­cro­met­ers (PM10) are called par­tic­u­late mat­ter, and if in­haled, can reach deeply into the lungs by way of the trachea and bron­chial tubes. 

Particles sized smal­ler than 2.5 mi­cro­met­ers are called fine particles (PM2.5) and sizes smal­ler than 0.1 mi­cro­met­ers are called ul­trafine particles. Par­tic­u­late mat­ter com­prised of PM10, PM2.5 and ultra-fine particles are dif­fi­cult to treat be­cause the mi­cro particles pass with the ex­haust through gas scrub­bers and sep­ar­ators without get­ting caught in the scrub­bing li­quid which may also cause ex­haust blockages.