Practical Reuse of Activated Carbon in the Exhaust Facility of Semiconductor Production Factory with Supercritical Carbon Dioxide Regeneration

¹ Department of Chemical Engineering, Graduate School of Engineering, Tohoku University, Aramaki Aza Aoba, 6-6-11, Aoba-Ku, Sendai, Miyagi 980-8579, Japan
² Technical Research Laboratory, Daidan Co., Ltd., 390 Kitanagai, Miyoshimachi, Irumagun, Saitama 354-0044, Japan
³ Department of Chemical Engineering, Graduate School of Engineering, Hiroshima University, Kagamiyama, 1-4-1, HigashiHiroshima, Hiroshima 739-8527, Japan
⁴ Department of Environment and Energy, Faculty of Engineering, Tohoku Institute of Technology, 35-1 Yagiyama, Kasumicho, Taihaku-Ku, Sendai, Miyagi, 982-8577, Japan

^* Corresponding author: itoyasuyuki@daidan.co.jp

Abstract

An possible reason why the activated carbon used in the exhaust facility of real semiconductor production factory could not be regenerated by scCO₂ regeneration was estimated to be attributable to its high boiling point adsorbates which showed a peak in TGA (Thermogravimetric analysis) curve at 400-900°C. This study was conducted to experimentally verify the above insight by using TGA analysis and scCO₂ regeneration for the real samples with different loads from the factory. The experimental results showed that high boiling point ratio defined by TGA analysis was less than 4.0% in case of the heating treatment temperature of 200 °C in the exhasut facility of real semiconductor production factory. This result suggested regeneration rate of the activated carbon was higher than 80%. Our scCO₂ regeneration process can achieve high efficiency as a practical application.