Wastewater treatment and recycle from a semiconductor industry: A demo-plant study

Abstract The objective of this study was to establish a demo-scale plant with 1,000 cubic metres per day (CMD) capacity to recycle industrial wastewater from a semiconductor industry. In this study, two wastewater streams from continuous electrodeionization (CEDI) and local scrubber (LS)/controlled decomposition and oxidation (CDO) with flow rate of 1,335 CMD and 1,012 CMD respectively were chosen to be recycled. For the CEDI reject reclaim system, boron selective resin (BSR) and activated carbon filter (ACF) were utilized to remove boron and total organic carbon (TOC) respectively. The water quality was good enough to be used as ultrapure water (UPW) supply. For the CDO reclaim system, the combination of ACF + ultrafiltration (UF) + reverse osmosis (RO) under high pH condition was implemented to recycle the local scrubber wastewater (LSW) for cooling tower top up. Product water from both treatment systems was able to meet the target water specifications. The average cost saving was S$0.91/m3 of reclaimed water produced.