SINGAPORE: Some semiconductor companies and data centres in Singapore are implementing measures to reduce water consumption.
The move comes as the data centre and chipmaking industries are highly water-intensive, requiring large volumes for chip manufacturing and cooling operations.
REDUCING WATER USAGE
Producing semiconductor wafers involves about 1,000 manufacturing steps, some of which require ultra-pure water to prevent even the smallest impurities from contaminating the process.
At United Microelectronics Corporation's (UMC) wafer fabrication facility in Pasir Ris, about 10,000 cubic metres of NEWater are used each day.
The water is treated into ultra-pure water for chipmaking before being collected, treated and reused.
UMC Singapore senior fab director Thomas Tey said: “If we can optimise and reduce the water usage for the process steps, we can save quite a lot of water.”
By segregating different wastewater streams, the wafer foundry is able to recover nearly 70 per cent of the water it uses.
Its water efficiency and recycling initiatives recover 3.9 million cubic metres of water annually – enough to fill about 1,560 Olympic-sized swimming pools.
“We actually do a precise segregation of the wastewater,” said Mr Tey.
“We have almost 20 channels of wastewater pipeline, and every pipeline we use different kinds of water treatment systems, so we actually can come out with different kinds of grades of water, and we reuse it for different operations,” he added.
“Some of them can go to process steps, some of them can go to auxiliary operations such as cooling towers.”
The company is exploring membrane-based treatment technologies, including reverse osmosis, which removes contaminants, and electrodeionisation, which uses electricity to remove dissolved impurities.
It said combining advanced filtration and polishing technologies could further increase the amount of water that can be reused at higher quality standards.
SMARTER COOLING SYSTEMS
Data centres, which support services ranging from video streaming to artificial intelligence, also rely heavily on water to keep servers cool.
Instead of cooling entire rooms with air conditioning, cloud computing firm OVHcloud circulates chilled water directly to its processors.
The company said targeted cooling is more efficient because the components generate significant amounts of heat.
It added that the system keeps water consumption below industry norms.
The firm is exploring smart sensors and AI-driven analytics, which it says could reduce water consumption by up to 30 per cent.
It is also able to cut power consumption by up to 50 per cent, said Mr Thiru Prakassh, OVHcloud’s regional data centre lead for Asia Pacific.
“We deploy smart sensors within the data centres, taking data from servers, the racks, as well as the cooling systems, and putting it in a ‘data lake’,” he added.
“Thereafter we do a predictive analysis using AI. We are then able to see where load is high or where load is low, based on the day or night, and we're able to inject water based on the demand.”
The company is also looking at using data from local weather stations to fine-tune chilled-water requirements for real-time cooling.
Read the full article at Channel NewsAsia (CNA) →
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