TSMC building huge water treatment plant

[techman-001]

One factor overlooked when considering the worldwide semi shortage is that Taiwan has been in drought, the worst one in 50 years and TSMC need a LOT of water for mcu manufacturing.

"According to TSMC the plant will be the world’s first such advanced industrial wastewater treatment centre.
The intention is that it could eventually supply ultimately nearly half of TSMC’s daily need for water."

https://www.electronicsweekly.com/news/business/tsmc-building-water-plant-2021-04/

[coppice]

Semiconductor fabs have a history of being in conflict with their neighbours, because they have not cleaned up their waste water adequately, and end up seriously polluting the ground water. Water quality law suits are a staple of the semiconductor industry lawyer's business.

[iMo]

TSMC is going to build 6 new plants in Arizona..
Has Arizona got enough water?
 

[coppice]

TSMC is going to build 6 new plants in Arizona..
Has Arizona got enough water?
 

It must have. Have you flown into Pheonix and seen all the swimming pools?

[Kleinstein]

The semiconductor fabs use a lot of water, but essentially all the water they use comes out as waste water. Very little water is actually build into the chips.
I would also not expect the water coming out to be very dirty - at least not much of it.

In the desert areas they are used to recycling the water. E.g. the Rio Grande recieves way more waste water than finally reaches the ocean.

[Silenos]

What is the water used for? Is it a process coolant, a reagent/solvent for some chemical process or just a "cleaning agent"? For me seems the latter - I guess they contaminate it with some toxic metal salts or organics, which are difficult to treat, and used to dump it into ocean or sth. All the articles are so annoyingly vague.

[coppice]

The semiconductor fabs use a lot of water, but essentially all the water they use comes out as waste water. Very little water is actually build into the chips.
I would also not expect the water coming out to be very dirty - at least not much of it.

When a fab has finished with the water it is pretty toxic. There have been a lot of court cases about fabs not dealing with their sewerage properly, and polluting the ground water. This has been the case in Arizona, so I expect they might be really vigilant about monitoring these new fabs. The final water coming out of a fab site should be pretty good, but only because they do so much processing on it.

[thm_w]

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0304389402002571
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0927775708008613
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1385894703001062

- isopropyl alcohol
- fluoride, phosphate, ammonium, copper, silica

The semiconductor fabs use a lot of water, but essentially all the water they use comes out as waste water. Very little water is actually build into the chips.
I would also not expect the water coming out to be very dirty - at least not much of it.

In the desert areas they are used to recycling the water. E.g. the Rio Grande recieves way more waste water than finally reaches the ocean.

If its clean going in and clean going out then they could just re-use the same water continuously as you note. So clearly its contaminated.

[SiliconWizard]

Waste water from semiconductor foundries contain a lot of contaminants.
https://siliconsemiconductor.net/article/110727/Semiconductor_Manufacturing_Achieving_Water_Authority_Compliance

OTOH, they need very pure water for some of their processes. So the clean water is what gets in. Certainly not what gets out, unfortunately.

[coppice]

Waste water from semiconductor foundries contain a lot of contaminants.
https://siliconsemiconductor.net/article/110727/Semiconductor_Manufacturing_Achieving_Water_Authority_Compliance

The water coming out of a fab site contains whatever the authorities allow it to contain. Every bit of extra purification costs significant money, so plants are built to a) comply with the regulations; b) avoid too much public backlash (you can never completely avoid complaints from activist groups); and c) moderate the likelihood of long term lawsuits if the groundwater goes badly downhill.

[daqq]

Semiconductor fabs have a history of being in conflict with their neighbours, because they have not cleaned up their waste water adequately, and end up seriously polluting the ground water.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/09/silicon-valley-full-superfund-sites/598531/

[coppice]

Semiconductor fabs have a history of being in conflict with their neighbours, because they have not cleaned up their waste water adequately, and end up seriously polluting the ground water.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/09/silicon-valley-full-superfund-sites/598531/

Remember that the cold war drove the early semiconductor industry, and the military isn't usually the most environmentally conscious bunch of people. Much of the environmental damage caused by fabs was in the early days. Modern fabs are usually a lot better.

[SiliconWizard]

Waste water from semiconductor foundries contain a lot of contaminants.
https://siliconsemiconductor.net/article/110727/Semiconductor_Manufacturing_Achieving_Water_Authority_Compliance

The water coming out of a fab site contains whatever the authorities allow it to contain. Every bit of extra purification costs significant money, so plants are built to a) comply with the regulations; b) avoid too much public backlash (you can never completely avoid complaints from activist groups); and c) moderate the likelihood of long term lawsuits if the groundwater goes badly downhill.

I was obviously talking about waste water from foundries *before* any kind of treatment.

They do not always fully comply with local regulations either. And/or regulations change, and it can be very costly to adapt.

Anyway, point is, waste water produced by foundries contain a lot of contaminants and it's very hard to treat properly, so no wonder foundries invest a lot of money in that.

[rstofer]

TSMC is going to build 6 new plants in Arizona..
Has Arizona got enough water?
 

Equally important is whether Arizona has enough technical people to populate a large wafer fab.

When companies based in Silicon Valley decided to open plants in Albuquerque,  Fort Collins and Austin, nobody wanted to relocate.  They didn't want to move to a town with only one possible high tech employer.  That may have eased somewhat over the last 25 years or so but the thing about working in the Valley is that you can change jobs by turning in the wrong driveway in the morning.

There are other requirements, most notably electric power.  Arizona has the Palo Verde nuclear plant which is always under pressure to decommission.  Then there are the other suppliers - process gases and chemicals are not usually available when moving into a new community.  It's also nice when process equipment is designed and built locally.

Building a fab in the middle of nowhere is not a trivial undertaking.

Why do it?  Locational Diversity.  Insurance companies don't want all of a company's manufacturing located in one area - particularly when that happens to be an earthquake zone.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_semiconductor_fabrication_plants

[coppice]

Equally important is whether Arizona has enough technical people to populate a large wafer fab.

Pheonix and its environs has a history in fabrication going back to the earliest days of semiconductors.

[rstofer]

The biggest contaminate in wastewater from a wafer fab is hydrofluoric acid.  There are extraction processes that result in calcium fluoride cake but that is still a hazardous waste.  It's just condensed.

http://www.phadjustment.com/Fluoride-Removal.html

Here is a nice article about the various water systems in a typical fab and includes a block diagram.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2588912518300043

Some of this stuff is pretty old.  We had water networks back in the early '80s.

City Water -> Degasifier -> Reverse Osmosis -> Dual Bed Dionization -> Storage -> Mixed Bed Dionization -> UV Sterilization -> Final Filtration -> Wafer Fab -> Return excess flow to Storage.

There are minimum flow rate requirements including return flows to prevent bacterial growth.

Water systems are as much art as science.

[Bassman59]

TSMC is going to build 6 new plants in Arizona..
Has Arizona got enough water?
 

Equally important is whether Arizona has enough technical people to populate a large wafer fab.

When companies based in Silicon Valley decided to open plants in Albuquerque,  Fort Collins and Austin, nobody wanted to relocate.  They didn't want to move to a town with only one possible high tech employer.  That may have eased somewhat over the last 25 years or so but the thing about working in the Valley is that you can change jobs by turning in the wrong driveway in the morning.

There are other requirements, most notably electric power.  Arizona has the Palo Verde nuclear plant which is always under pressure to decommission.  Then there are the other suppliers - process gases and chemicals are not usually available when moving into a new community.  It's also nice when process equipment is designed and built locally.

Building a fab in the middle of nowhere is not a trivial undertaking.

Why do it?  Locational Diversity.  Insurance companies don't want all of a company's manufacturing located in one area - particularly when that happens to be an earthquake zone.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_semiconductor_fabrication_plants

I live in Tucson, which is about 100 miles south of Phoenix. I've been here for 24 years.

THERE IS NOT ENOUGH WATER IN ARIZONA. This is the whole of the truth. The rest, as the rabbi said, is commentary, so now go study it: Everyone should read the book Cadillac Desert, first published in 1988, to understand what's really going on. The book has turned out to be prescient.

The water level of Lake Mead, formed by the construction of the Hoover Dam, is at a historically low level and there's no end in sight. Same with the water level of the giant error called Lake Powell, formed when Glen Canyon was dammed. The lifeline to the entire region is the Colorado River and it's ... running at historically low levels.

There is no water.

The sprawl here is insane. Housing developments go up with absolutely zero guarantees of a water supply.


The concern about qualified engineers and technicians is valid.

Yes, the state is home to a land-grant research university (University of Arizona here in Tucson) as well as two other excellent public universities, Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff and Arizona State in Tempe. Do these universities produce enough graduates to meet the demand? I honestly don't know.

But -- and this is important -- we have sociopathic assholes running the state. Forget, if you can, the insanity of the "audit" of the 2020 vote. The Legislature and the Governor keep cutting education funding to the point where we had a state-wide initiative to increase taxes to restore education funding to what it was prior to the 2007 recession. It passed overwhelmingly. Yet the Legislature is trying to run through another tax cut to nullify that law, and that will pass.

As you can imagine, our public schools have been struggling.

So when a company like, say, Intel or Microchip, wants to expand and attract new talent to the area, the first thing anyone with a family or considering having a family will ask is, "What are the schools like?" And that information is easy to find, and it is damning. So no amount of tax concessions to businesses for "job creation" can make someone uproot from wherever and move to a state which simply doesn't value education at all.

Does the new job pay for a private school? Hahaha. Welcome to Arizona, where the salaries are as low as the water level.

Anyway. Southern Arizona will be uninhabitable in about 50 years. Count on it.

[JohnG]

Come to NY, like Global Foundries and Wolfspeed (Cree).

There's water, friendly northeasterners  , decent public education, no governors in jail ATM, water, not too many wingnuts, water, high taxes, cheap housing (upstate, where the fabs are), high taxes  , SUNY Albany (it's where IBM made it's "2 nm" wafers, look it up), etc ...

Edit: I forgot to add - a major UFO spaceport in the Hudson Valley... we got it all!

Jes' sayin'

Cheers,
John

[phil from seattle]

The water level of Lake Mead, formed by the construction of the Hoover Dam, is at a historically low level and there's no end in sight. Same with the water level of the giant error called Lake Powell, formed when Glen Canyon was dammed. The lifeline to the entire region is the Colorado River and it's ... running at historically low levels.

Not to pick at a point but picking at a point...

Historically, there originally was no lake so when the damn first closed and started impounding, that is the lowest level. The point, though a bit hysterical, is correct.  Water is an issue. But so are jobs and other economic drivers.  As to skilled staff, Intel has had a long presence in the area, going back almost 50 years. Motorola, too. Lots of other semiconductor players. There are second generation workers in the industry there. Maybe 3rd generation by now. And California is pricing people out so there is a ready made workforce available for import.  Which, of course, means more water demand...

[coppice]

Water is an issue. But so are jobs and other economic drivers.

With the water table in Arizona dropping even in the wettest years, the idea of a tradeoff is silly. The jobs, along with everything else, are on borrowed time if the water supply and demand can't be aligned.

[JohnG]

The water problem is real, and there is not even a nearby ocean to desalinate. I lived in Tucson for most of a decade, and there are serious water problems statewide. There were problems in Tucson, and they are far more forward-thinking than the Phoenix area. The current state government is just wishing them away. It's about as effective as me wishing I was a billionaire...

If TSMC has water problems in Taiwan, they will have a tough time operating 6 fabs in AZ. Of course, if the plan is to buy out some existing fabs and cash in on some gov't funding, that's a different story.

There's always Texas, but last winter's power outage and the state's handling of it has given some semiconductor companies second thoughts.

Cheers,
John

[Kerlin]

Semiconductor fabs have a history of being in conflict with their neighbours, because they have not cleaned up their waste water adequately, and end up seriously polluting the ground water. Water quality law suits are a staple of the semiconductor industry lawyer's business.

You are correct.
My Taiwanese brother in law smugly told me that Taiwan was a smart high tech place,that's why they make semis there. That's what they are told to keep them happy.
He knew I was working in embedded projects with local manufacturers in Taiwan and was in close contact with western semi companies.
I told him that I had been told the reason that the semis are made in Taiwan is that western governments would not allow the pollution and there are too many problems with health issues to workers.
The machinery and technology comes from else where. I know a guy, quite well, that installs it after its imported.

While in Taiwan I was greeted at a restaurant and sat down next to another "foreigner". We got talking and I found that he was an American who was in Taiwan because he worked for a large manufacturer. He was there on a project to make P.C. tablets. he told me he was there to check on the way a conductive coating was sprayed onto the inside of the cover, for E.M.I. prevention.
He said we do it here because otherwise we would have to provide the workers with protection against the coating as it is carcinogenic and we would have to collect all air, filter it and recycle it. Here it is much easier we just give them a cloth mask and tell them to spray it.

[JohnG]

I will add one other interesting thing I heard recently, which is that with TSMC (and lots of others) expanding, it's getting harder and harder to find sufficient engineering and skilled labor personnel. There's not an infinite supply, as it turns out.

Cheers,
John

[Bassman59]

And California is pricing people out so there is a ready made workforce available for import. 

Please re-read my comment about attracting skilled workers to an area which does not value education.

[Kerlin]

I will add one other interesting thing I heard recently, which is that with TSMC (and lots of others) expanding, it's getting harder and harder to find sufficient engineering and skilled labor personnel. There's not an infinite supply, as it turns out.

Cheers,
John

That's because they need to go to the US for training and with the Wuhan virus causing a travel problem that is only going to get worse.

I wouldn't worry about areas of the US being unsuitable for manufacture because of water. With ample resources and technology available it would soon be solved.
Even humble Australia has installed such solutions as long pipelines and water desalination plants.

Besides Taiwan has its own massive problems. The Island is geologically very unstable.
The local head of a large American semi company showed me pictures of some foundations they had put in for a plant in Taiwan.
 I forget how deep he told me they were, but I remember they were incredibly deep. He said they had to abandon it because "it wobbled like a jelly" so they couldn't proceed.
Anyone who has been there for a length of time will tell you about the constant earth quake tremors.

The Taiwan semi industry could easily be wiped out by earth quakes.