Reducing Consumption, Emissions And Costs In Semiconductor Manufacturing
According to a study by the International SEMATECH Manufacturing Initiative (ISMI), conducted at 300 mm and 200 mm semiconductor manufacturing facilities in Asia, North America, and Europe, there was a dramatic decline in normalised fab energy consumption between 1997 and 2011.
ISMI's Environment, Safety and Health (ESH) Centre
evaluated the annual energy use of each participating fab. It determined that
energy consumed by process equipment, which according to the latest survey
accounts for more than 50 percent of a facility's energy usage, improved its
efficiencies by half in 2011.
What's more, non-process equipment energy consumption has quartered since 1997. The next highest energy consumers, after process equipment, were central chiller plants and bulk gas production. Waste heat recovery and reuse practices were benchmarked for best in class performance.
Recently, ISMI initiated a workshop to collaborate with member company subject matter experts to explore solutions for bulk gas production energy reduction. The participants benchmarked best in class metrics and reviewed best in class design practices for nitrogen plants, specifically focusing on air compressors, which consume up to 85 percent of the bulk gas energy budget.
"Energy efficiency and conservation initiatives are critical to continue to reduce energy consumption and integrate newer technology in semiconductor manufacturing," says Sanjay Rajguru, director of ISMI. "ISMI's recent energy study gives an overview of general industry performance and provides direction for future ISMI energy use reduction activities. Through this and past studies and the continuation of collaborating with industry peers and equipment suppliers long-lasting energy efficiency achievements can be made possible."
Energy reduction has been part of ESH efforts at ISMI
and SEMATECH since 1997, when the program published the industry's first
Worldwide Fab Energy Study. Since then, ISMI technologists have worked
extensively on projects focused on resource conservation and manufacturing
sustainability that collectively document energy and resource conservation
solutions.
These ISMI studies relate to the "idle" mode in vacuum pumps, optimising exhaust flows on tools, lowering cleanroom airflow through HEPA filters and measuring key tools to optimise heat removal.
Based on the energy survey results, ISMI will focus its efforts to further enable effective energy savings in four identified areas: nitrogen system efficiency and total consumption reduction, Controlled Dry Air (CDA) system efficiency and total consumption reduction, process cooling water system efficiency, and process vacuum system efficiency.
ISMI's ESH Centre is dedicated to addressing the
energy and resource conservation needs of the semiconductor industry. Now that
energy consumption for the semiconductor industry has been reduced by half,
ISMI will work to reduce water and chemical usage to improve cost and reduce
environmental impact.
To help drive the move towards more efficient operations, the ESH Centre is focusing on global regulatory challenges, emerging approaches for resource conservation in existing and next generation manufacturing facilities, and unique ESH requirements and solutions for the next generation of semiconductor manufacturing processes and facilities.
