Inert gas recovery from a semiconductor manufacturing tool

An apparatus and method for treating process and cleaning gases exhausted from a semiconductor manufacturing tool during respective processing and cleaning phases and for recovering an inert gas from at least one of said treated process and cleaning gases. The apparatus comprises: a wet scrubber configured to receive and treat said exhaust gases; a solid phase gas adsorption separator configured to receive gases output by said wet scrubber via valve circuitry; and valve and control circuitry configured to route one of said cleaning and process gases output from said wet scrubber to bypass said solid phase gas adsorption separator and to route the other of said process and cleaning gases output from said wet scrubber to said solid phase gas adsorption separator; said solid phase gas adsorption separator being configured to differentially adsorb gases of different molecular characteristics onto a solid phase, and thereby separate the components of said received gases such that at least some of water vapour, and