Click the link to read “This Week in Water” from the H2ORadio website. Here’s an excerpt:
August 10, 2024
Last week, President Trump said he wants to impose a 100 percent tariff on imports of semiconductors and chips—but would exempt companies that make them in the United States. Details on a prospective policy were scarce—and also missing in the proposal are plans to address a concern vexing the industry—where’s all the water going to come from to manufacture chips in the U.S.?
A single fabrication facility, or fab, can use tens of millions of gallons of tap water per day, which is cleaned to become “ultrapure” by removing any particles or salts that could damage the chips. Currently, the ultrapure water is used only once to make chips. The wastewater is used to cool the buildings, which get very hot, or in scrubbers that “shower off” gases and other chemical contaminants used in the manufacturing process.
Several U.S. fabs are currently located in water-stressed areas such as Arizona, so can adding more plants in the country be achieved sustainably? Professor Paul Westerhoff at Arizona State University’s School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment told H2O Radio that fabs can be sustainable but would require companies to invest in ways to recycle water to continuously bring it back to an ultrapure state to avoid tapping into local supplies.
He and his colleagues are researching what reuse technologies and policies would be necessary to make facilitates “water neutral” or at least close to it, some of which would include protecting the watersheds where manufacturers operate.
Another problem in growing the semiconductor industry in the U.S. is climate change. Making semiconductors is energy intensive, so manufacturers would need to switch to renewables instead of fossil fuels to be sustainable. Otherwise, as global temperatures rise and severe droughts increase, the water upon which fabs rely may not be there when they’re ready.