Venturi scrubber

Principle

In this type of scrubber, the scrubber liquid (mostly water) together with the waste gas is accelerated to high velocities and turbulence in the throat of the venturi. In this section, water is released in fine water droplets. Behind this throat, the water/gas mixture passes into the diffusor where the gas speed drops back to normal values. At this point, contaminant particles are attached to the water droplets and collected in the scrubber liquid.

A venturi scrubber is often used in combination with a polishing abatement technique for the removal of volatile compounds (e.g. packed bed scrubber) and this in order to precondition the waste gas with regard to temperature, moisture content and dust concentration. The advantage of implementing a venturi scrubber is that a fan for aspiring the gases is no longer needed. As a drawback, the low removal efficiency for volatile compounds and the high power consumption of the circulating liquid pump can be mentioned.

A venturi scrubber is most often used in a continuous mode, meaning a continuous water supply in order to discharge the suspended solids.

Scheme

Realisations