Water reclaim strategies for the microelectronics industry

This paper discusses water reclaim opportunities as a viable means of ensuring the future water needs of the microelectronics industry. Escalating factory costs; increased burdens on municipal infrastructure; governmental compliance; an awareness of limited resource availability to sustain a young, rapidly changing industry; a need to control escalating capital costs and investment risk; and the need to deliver new, expanded, and re-equipped semiconductor factories faster underscore the importance of developing a greater understanding and a more widespread implementation of process wastewater reclaim in the semiconductor industry. Water reclaim is important in semiconductor fabrication facilities and is supported by environmental, technology, regulatory, and economic issues. Water reclaim is possible and possesses potential for wide spread implementation in new and existing factory design. It can also be accomplished within the limits of available technologies and can be cost effective when considerations are given to the operational savings inherent in consumption and discharge reduction. In this paper a general water reclaim system is developed with system descriptions, diagrams, and flow analysis for a niche market fab.