The main use of the scrubber is to remove any chlorine that may form upon activation. If your application is not chlorine sensitive, then the scrubber is not needed.
Also, activating with HCl doesn't usually form chlorine.
It looks like you are good to go both ways. However, using high concentrations of the chemicals and forcing the exothermic reaction to boiling can produce some unexpected results.
A check you can do is to check the pH of your CDS. It shouldn't vary much from what the pH of the water you started with was. If the pH drops a lot, you have chlorine being produced. When chlorine is dissolved in water it forms hypochlorous acid. Acids drop the pH of the solution.