Counting particles provides a possibility for the monitoring of the required pureness.
Cleanrooms are facilities for the protection of products and persons from unwanted contamination through particles and germs. There are cleanrooms for the usage in the industrial sector, for example the semiconductor or the pharmaceutical industry as well as health care facilities, and operating theaters. The number of airborne particles in the room is limited by ventilation engineering to fi the purity requirements for the room.
The initiation of a continuous monitoring system by the facility operator does not allow an equivalent positioning to the sampling point of the normative qualification measurings. Usual practice is to position the sampling points of the monitoring system in the air extraction which is viable and not affecting the production process.
The maximal release of the particles sources in the cleanroom is the most important design criteria for the ventilation unit. A partial load operation of the ventilation system is poorly possible, because the position of the air extraction can not reflect a representative concentration of the requirement zone: The resulting full load operation mode leads to an unnecessary high energy consumption of the facility, which has to be avoided.
The purpose of this research project is to quantify the influence of the position for the air extraction during particle countings on the protection effect in the requirement zone. This influence is directly coupled to the energy demand.
By the use of numerical flow simulations as well as experimental investigations in the existing research cleanroom mathematical models shall be developed, which should show the relationship between a sample spot, the protection class in the requirement zone as well as the required energy demand.
Funding

Project term | October 2018 to October 2022 |
Funding code | 03ET1604 |
Project management | Julia Lange |