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Once a fab has water, it generally doesn't discharge a whole lot and doesn't take a whole lot of new water in. Outside water need extreme levels of treatment to
by selectodude 5y ago
Once a fab has water, it generally doesn't discharge a whole lot and doesn't take a whole lot of new water in. Outside water need extreme levels of treatment to be usable and once its used, requires such an extreme level of cleaning to be discharged that it's easier to just keep the entire process a closed loop.
- j_walter 5y agoNot true. There are multiple grades of water that are used in a semiconductor plant and not all of it needs huges amounts of treatment (like process cooling water). However extracting the heat out of that water tends to cause a lot of evaporation, especially in high temperature climates...thus a lot of makeup water. Some fabs have a goal of 100% recycle, but that is not going to happen. Even small fabs tend to use and discharge hundreds of thousands if not millions of gallons per day. https://www.oregonlive.com/silicon-forest/2017/08/intel_water_recycling_project.html https://www.oregonlive.com/silicon-forest/2017/08/intel_wate... Intel in the Portland area uses over 2 billion gallons of water in a single year. Even with their latest recycle plant online, that only cuts their usage by half.