Acid Gas, Acid Aerosol and Chlorine Emissions from Trichlorosilane Burning Processes

This study was set out to investigate the emission characteristics of HCl (in both particle (HCl p ) and gaseous (HCl g ) forms), and Cl 2  during the trichlorosilane (TCS) burning process under various relative humidity conditions (RH; range = 55%–90%) which might exist at its storage area. All experiments were conducted in a test chamber. We found that HCl p  was consistently as the most dominant contaminant (= 1.30 × 10 5 –1.46 × 10 5  mg/m 3 ), followed by the HCl g  (= 9.03 × 10 3 –11.4 × 10 3  mg/m 3 ) and Cl 2  (= 1.91 × 10 3 –2.18 × 10 3 ), emitted from the TCS burning process for the all selected RH conditions. The particle sizes of HCl p  fell to the range of the accumulation mode (MMADs = 0.808–1.04 μm; GSDs = 2.13–3.50). Fractions of emitted HClp reaching to the alveolar region (= 85.8–88.8%) were much higher than that of the tracheobronchial region (= 6.53–8.80%) and head region (= 4.67–5.40%). It is concluded that more ill-health effects on the deep lung region can be expected than other regions as workers exposed to the contaminants emitted from TCS burning processes.