Analysis of New Air Control System in Clean Stocker

Clean stockers are being used by semiconductor and TFT-LCD manufacturers to store and buffer work in process. The only way to keep the stored product clean is to provide constant clean airflow the product and through stocker. Up to now, stockers typically have been configured to receive their laminar airflow from fan filter units that are located on the side of the stocker. This type of stocker may have such problems as complexity of structure, increment of temperature, mechanical vibration, initial investment and running cost. In this study, in order to solve the above mentioned problems, new air control system in stocker is proposed, which is to control open ratios of exits that are located on the side of the stocker without fan filter units. In this study, static pressure regain was used for the analysis of the open ratios of exits theoretically and experiment was also conducted using actual clean stocker for TFT-LCD manufacturers and CFDesign, was used for simulating airflow in stocker. As a result, open ratios of exits can be obtained by the analysis of static pressure regain and was verified by experiment and simulation results. Therefore, new air control system in stocker can be used by the semiconductor and TFT-LCD manufacturers.