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> The manufacturing complex could consume up to 10 million gallons of water per day, enough to supply a whole town or village. The entire city of Syracuse, by c

> The manufacturing complex could consume up to 10 million gallons of water per day, enough to supply a whole town or village. The entire city of Syracuse, by comparison, uses an average of 40 million gallons per day. We have a lot of water in the area, and foundries are very water intensive. That was a smart long term play of Micron. Very happy to hear about this.

gimme_treefiddy 4y ago
Any idea why it would require this much water?
- yababa_y 4y ago
  It gets ultrapurified and used to wash _everything_ all the time, lots of steps are chemically nasty and need to be completely gone before production proceeds.
  - chinathrow 4y ago
    Can they recycle it on site?
    - yababa_y 4y ago
      Yes, and they (universally?) already do recycle substantial fractions (>30%) of their wastewater. It’s a hot area of development. Truly enormous amounts of rinsing, mindboggling.
- pkaye 4y ago
  This video from YouTube talks a bit about it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3RzODSR3gk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3RzODSR3gk
missedthecue 4y ago
This is why it seems so odd to me that companies including both Intel and TSMC keep setting up shop in Arizona of all places. At least NY has ample rainfall and borders two Great Lakes.
- MoreSEMI 4y ago
  Low sesimic activity. You want the FAB to run 24/7 even if that means trucking in expensive water. Any down time will absolutely wipe out any cost savings from cheaper water. Probably even easier still to invest some extra capital to recycle more water.
  - themitigating 4y ago
    What sesimic activity occurs in upstate ny?
    - throwayyy479087 4y ago
      None, but taxes are much higher in ny
    - doobiedowner 4y ago
      Somewhat often but minor. I believe it's called glacial rebound. As someone tangentially involved in the optical side of chip fab, I am excited to have a neighbor like this. We work primarily with Micron competitors, but this is good for WesternNewYork.
      - JshWright 4y ago
        I feel like naming regions in New York is a fools errand, sure to “offend” everyone, but “western” New York is generally considered to be west of Rochester. Syracuse is about as Central New York as you can get.
        adventured 4y ago
        San Francisco is actually central California (Eureka is northern CA). Same premise.
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
itishappy 4y ago
I feel these numbers are always a bit misleading. Sure the processes takes 10 million gallons a day, but much of that water can be reclaimed and recirculated. > “Conventional treatment of wastewater at semiconductor plants had recycled anywhere from 40 percent to 70 percent of water used in their processes,” explains Govindan. “Some manufacturers still only recycle 40 percent of the water they use.” > However, over the past two years Gradiant has been working with semiconductor plants, improving their water reuse so that they're able to recycle 98 percent of the water they use. So, instead of bringing in 10 million gallons of freshwater a day from outside, these new recycling technologies mean they need to draw only 200,000 gallons of water from outside the plant to operate. https://spectrum.ieee.org/fabs-cut-back-water-use https://spectrum.ieee.org/fabs-cut-back-water-use
- cronix 4y ago
  Yes, it's basically like an indoor swimming pool. It takes a lot of water to initially fill it, but they clean and reuse most of it.
  - speed_spread 4y ago
    They use hydrofluoric acid to balance the pH, then go skinny dipping.
- uup 4y ago
  Wouldn’t the upper range, 70% recycled water, still be 3,000,000 gallons of water / day?
- pfdietz 4y ago
  Gradiant has this cool scheme (from MIT) for distilling water using a carrier gas. The special sauce was a "bubble tray condenser" that condenses water from the carrier gas by bubbling it through trays of progressively cooler water. This provides enormous surface area to get around the problem of mass transfer through the boundary layer.
- Double_a_92 4y ago
  I also can't take those numbers seriously, since I once saw a documentary about coffee... And they calculated the water of a small river nearby that was partly redirected to wash away the shells of the coffee beans.
BurningFrog 4y ago
Funny how the factory "consumes" water, while the city only "uses" it.
- Rebelgecko 4y ago
  Does the effluent have different outcomes?
  - s0rce 4y ago
    Factory might be recycling, city probably just treats and puts back into the environment (just a guess but doubt they are recycling water in NY).
    - JshWright 4y ago
      The city of Syracuse gets most of its water from Skaneateles Lake, a small lake southwest of the city. It’s very clean water, and the city has a filtration waiver that allows them to use unfiltered water from the lake (it’s widely considered to be some of the best municipal water in the country). The city’s treated (and sometimes untreated, depending on how much rain we’ve had) waste water is dumped into Onondaga Lake, which is not part of the Skaneateles Lake watershed. Most of the rest of the area, outside the city limits (and a few surrounding towns that are connected with the Syracuse water system for legacy reasons), gets its water from Lake Ontario, which is where this plant’s water would be coming from as well. If anyone is curious, I am happy to ramble on for quite a while about the municipal water systems of the greater Syracuse area (occupational hazard of a couple decades as a firefighter in the area).
      - JaimeThompson 4y ago
        I am very curious, please do!
        JshWright 4y ago
        Hah, it would get very boring, very fast... When the area was first colonized by Europeans, the major hubs in the area were actually south of Syracuse, along the Seneca and Cherry Valley Turnpikes, which were the original east/west routes through the state, prior to the construction of the Erie Canal (the canal is a significant contributing reason Syracuse became the major settlement and the southern towns are just suburbs now). Due to those earlier settlements though, there were a number of water districts that predate the Syracuse city water district in the southern part of Onondaga County. Those districts have now all been rolled into the county water authority, which coordinates with the Syracuse Department of Water to deliver water to the surrounding area. Of interest to firefighting though, this patchwork of water districts that combined over time has resulted in a variety of different threads on fire hydrants, with "Syracuse Standard" and "National Standard" hydrants often being found within the same fire districts. Pretty much every fire truck/engine in the area carries adapters to convert from one to the other.
Covzire 4y ago
I hope Micron got their tax agreements in triplicate and signed in both ink and blood, I wouldn't trust NY state without mithril-clad contracts.
onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
I know chips need to be cleaned with ultra pure water - but 10 million gallons?! That sounds like a lot. It's like 20 Olympic swimming pools - 30 acre feet of water... That's about how much 7500 acres of farmland uses per day - a decent portion of which is actually just rain... Is there an easy way to understand why they need THAT much water? IIUC, there's about ~600 chips per wafer (depends on chip and wafer size), and a plant produces ~30,000 wafers per month. That's ~18M chips per month, or ~600,000 per day. So each chip needs ~17 gallons of water?! These chips are TINY - like not even a cubic inch. Volumetrically, that's like 5000x as much water. Why??

gimme_treefiddy 4y ago

Any idea why it would require this much water?

yababa_y 4y ago
It gets ultrapurified and used to wash _everything_ all the time, lots of steps are chemically nasty and need to be completely gone before production proceeds.
- chinathrow 4y ago
  Can they recycle it on site?
  - yababa_y 4y ago
    Yes, and they (universally?) already do recycle substantial fractions (>30%) of their wastewater. It’s a hot area of development. Truly enormous amounts of rinsing, mindboggling.
pkaye 4y ago
This video from YouTube talks a bit about it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3RzODSR3gk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3RzODSR3gk

missedthecue 4y ago

This is why it seems so odd to me that companies including both Intel and TSMC keep setting up shop in Arizona of all places. At least NY has ample rainfall and borders two Great Lakes.

MoreSEMI 4y ago
Low sesimic activity. You want the FAB to run 24/7 even if that means trucking in expensive water. Any down time will absolutely wipe out any cost savings from cheaper water. Probably even easier still to invest some extra capital to recycle more water.
- themitigating 4y ago
  What sesimic activity occurs in upstate ny?
  - throwayyy479087 4y ago
    None, but taxes are much higher in ny
  - doobiedowner 4y ago
    Somewhat often but minor. I believe it's called glacial rebound. As someone tangentially involved in the optical side of chip fab, I am excited to have a neighbor like this. We work primarily with Micron competitors, but this is good for WesternNewYork.
    - JshWright 4y ago
      I feel like naming regions in New York is a fools errand, sure to “offend” everyone, but “western” New York is generally considered to be west of Rochester. Syracuse is about as Central New York as you can get.
      - adventured 4y ago
        San Francisco is actually central California (Eureka is northern CA). Same premise.
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]

itishappy 4y ago

I feel these numbers are always a bit misleading. Sure the processes takes 10 million gallons a day, but much of that water can be reclaimed and recirculated. > “Conventional treatment of wastewater at semiconductor plants had recycled anywhere from 40 percent to 70 percent of water used in their processes,” explains Govindan. “Some manufacturers still only recycle 40 percent of the water they use.” > However, over the past two years Gradiant has been working with semiconductor plants, improving their water reuse so that they're able to recycle 98 percent of the water they use. So, instead of bringing in 10 million gallons of freshwater a day from outside, these new recycling technologies mean they need to draw only 200,000 gallons of water from outside the plant to operate. https://spectrum.ieee.org/fabs-cut-back-water-use https://spectrum.ieee.org/fabs-cut-back-water-use

cronix 4y ago
Yes, it's basically like an indoor swimming pool. It takes a lot of water to initially fill it, but they clean and reuse most of it.
- speed_spread 4y ago
  They use hydrofluoric acid to balance the pH, then go skinny dipping.
uup 4y ago
Wouldn’t the upper range, 70% recycled water, still be 3,000,000 gallons of water / day?
pfdietz 4y ago
Gradiant has this cool scheme (from MIT) for distilling water using a carrier gas. The special sauce was a "bubble tray condenser" that condenses water from the carrier gas by bubbling it through trays of progressively cooler water. This provides enormous surface area to get around the problem of mass transfer through the boundary layer.
Double_a_92 4y ago
I also can't take those numbers seriously, since I once saw a documentary about coffee... And they calculated the water of a small river nearby that was partly redirected to wash away the shells of the coffee beans.

BurningFrog 4y ago

Funny how the factory "consumes" water, while the city only "uses" it.

Rebelgecko 4y ago
Does the effluent have different outcomes?
- s0rce 4y ago
  Factory might be recycling, city probably just treats and puts back into the environment (just a guess but doubt they are recycling water in NY).
  - JshWright 4y ago
    The city of Syracuse gets most of its water from Skaneateles Lake, a small lake southwest of the city. It’s very clean water, and the city has a filtration waiver that allows them to use unfiltered water from the lake (it’s widely considered to be some of the best municipal water in the country). The city’s treated (and sometimes untreated, depending on how much rain we’ve had) waste water is dumped into Onondaga Lake, which is not part of the Skaneateles Lake watershed. Most of the rest of the area, outside the city limits (and a few surrounding towns that are connected with the Syracuse water system for legacy reasons), gets its water from Lake Ontario, which is where this plant’s water would be coming from as well. If anyone is curious, I am happy to ramble on for quite a while about the municipal water systems of the greater Syracuse area (occupational hazard of a couple decades as a firefighter in the area).
    - JaimeThompson 4y ago
      I am very curious, please do!
      - JshWright 4y ago
        Hah, it would get very boring, very fast... When the area was first colonized by Europeans, the major hubs in the area were actually south of Syracuse, along the Seneca and Cherry Valley Turnpikes, which were the original east/west routes through the state, prior to the construction of the Erie Canal (the canal is a significant contributing reason Syracuse became the major settlement and the southern towns are just suburbs now). Due to those earlier settlements though, there were a number of water districts that predate the Syracuse city water district in the southern part of Onondaga County. Those districts have now all been rolled into the county water authority, which coordinates with the Syracuse Department of Water to deliver water to the surrounding area. Of interest to firefighting though, this patchwork of water districts that combined over time has resulted in a variety of different threads on fire hydrants, with "Syracuse Standard" and "National Standard" hydrants often being found within the same fire districts. Pretty much every fire truck/engine in the area carries adapters to convert from one to the other.

Covzire 4y ago

I hope Micron got their tax agreements in triplicate and signed in both ink and blood, I wouldn't trust NY state without mithril-clad contracts.

onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago

I know chips need to be cleaned with ultra pure water - but 10 million gallons?! That sounds like a lot. It's like 20 Olympic swimming pools - 30 acre feet of water... That's about how much 7500 acres of farmland uses per day - a decent portion of which is actually just rain... Is there an easy way to understand why they need THAT much water? IIUC, there's about ~600 chips per wafer (depends on chip and wafer size), and a plant produces ~30,000 wafers per month. That's ~18M chips per month, or ~600,000 per day. So each chip needs ~17 gallons of water?! These chips are TINY - like not even a cubic inch. Volumetrically, that's like 5000x as much water. Why??