Mystery German chip fab sips on Gradiant's ultrapure water Water treatment company Gradiant has won a contract to build a plant providing ultrapure water for a chip fabrication facility being constructed in Germany by an unnamed "large semiconductor manufacturer." The project will see Gradiant's recently acquired subsidiary, H+E Group, design and install a treatment plant to provide …
"The semiconductor industry is said to consume about 264 billion gallons of water per year globally, with about three-quarters used in semiconductor fabs and processed to ultrapure form for production steps such as wafer cleaning, rinsing, and surface conditioning."
'Consume' indicates that after being used it is then unavailable as a resource fro anything else. eg water used in farms to grow crops is consumed in the sense that it becomes part of the crop and is then unavailable.
AFAIK chips do not have any significant water content, so and water 'used' is not 'consumed' but is still available in one form or another. The result of using ultrapure water to clean and rinse wafers is likely to be impure water.... as long as it is treated to remove pollutants after being used*, it can be safely released back to whatever source (eg river) that the original water is coming from pre-purification.
*this is a good point as any to advocate for legislation that all industrial facilities using water have their water intake *downstream* from their wastewater outflow
"said to consume about 264 billion gallons of water"
Is that Imperial gallons, or US gallons, or what?
Why is this value not shown in a universal measurement, for example litres?
Or even metric tonnes?
We'll have to assume the billion referred to is a US billion.
It's not like El Reg to use random units of measurement now, is it?
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