Argument for not cleaning process water is wafer thin 22 October 2013

Facilities management and water treatment specialist MSS Group is advising process users to check their water systems for proper treatment, if they want to avoid costly plant trips.

MSS director Dave Robertson gives the example of being called in recently to "a globally renowned manufacturer of semiconductor wafers", where it found an untreated water system suffering from significant corrosion.

"The ongoing performance of the plant was suffering heavily, due mainly to the fact that the murky brown process water had been accepted as being the norm," he says.

Water quality tests and particulate analysis had never been carried out and part of the plant's processing facility had deteriorated to such an extent that "some of it had worn away".

The resulting debris was blocking the flow of water so the process was continually overheating and tripping out. What's more, Robertson says scrap was a considerable problem, with costs "escalating to £10's of thousands over a 12 month period".

MSS called in Industrial Purification Systems. "IPS had just completed a similar project where the process was almost identical," explains Robertson. "Over a six-month period [its] water filtration technology ... had proven to be highly effective."

Robertson says that a particulate spread analysis led to IPS's CrossFlow 300 water filter being recommended, along with a controller and electrically operated valve to smooth the transition between online operation and offline cleaning.

Operationally, the system uses a patented vortex bed stabiliser, which maintains flat bed filtration with high surface turbulence, he explains. This ensures that no bio-fouling can be seeded, while holding filtered contamination in suspension above the media bed.

Hence, lower pressure drops, longer filtration and shorter backwash cycles – making direct savings on operational costs. Also, the high interstitial void volume of the media allows for greater dirt holding capacity and contamination interaction for the Zeta potential of the media to remove particulates down to 0.45 micron.

Robertson says the technology has been shown to provide a high efficiency removal rate of over 86% at 1.0 micron in a single pass, whereas conventional filters have to undertake multiple passes to get anywhere near that.

"There was an improvement in the water quality within a fortnight," states Robertson. "After six to eight weeks we saw a remarkable improvement. The water filtration technology is now running concurrently with a chemical package to eradicate future corrosion.

"The user has been so pleased with the results that it has bought another filtration unit for another system."

Brian Tinham

Related Companies
Industrial Purification Systems Ltd
MSS Group

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