The industrial workshop is often a large space building, and the pollution sources are often located in the occupied zone, and the released pollutants will seriously affect the safety and health of operators. Due to the limitation of production process, it is a difficult problem for the ventilation system design of industrial workshops that how to effectively capture and control the pollutants in the occupied zone with the lowest energy consumption on the premise of not occupying the production space as much as possible. In this paper, the pollutant removal performance of three ventilation air distribution models, i.e. downside air supply–upside air exhaust, upside air supply–downside air exhaust and vortex ventilation, are compared in dealing with large-density pollutants in a large space workshop by numerical simulation. The pollutant discharge time and pollutant concentration evolution of the three air distribution systems were compared. The results show that for large-density pollutants, the upside air supply–downside air exhaust system and vortex ventilation system can remove pollutants in the occupied zone in a short time, which has higher pollutant removal efficiency than that of downside air supply–upside air exhaust; When the intermittent operation strategy is adopted, the vortex ventilation system can realize the energy-saving operation of the ventilation system at a lower start and stop frequency.