Technical advances need water that is even cleaner than drinking water

Leo T. Meire
Vice Chair, Industrial Water Treatment Technical Committee

This article was written on a computer, powered by electricity and composed by a human.

Making this whole process possible is water — abundant, high-purity water. Water to clean the silicon microchips, water for the steam at the power plant and water to make the flu shots keeping us healthy.

We all know that water is necessary for all beings to live. What fewer of us understand is that water is also necessary to advance the technical innovations that make possible so much of modern life.

A bank of ultrafiltration membranes is the final step in the production of ultrapure water for microelectronics processing.

The Industrial Water Treatment Technical Committee is concerned with the production of high-purity water for industrial use, primarily in semiconductors, biopharmaceuticals and power generation, but including other process industries.

The challenge to the Technical Committee is to bring together academia and industry, and to provide a setting where both can develop better means of meeting the requirements for purity, regulatory compliance and economic operation. The committee is now actively recruiting members.

Currently, the clear trends are toward higher purity specifications, 100 percent availability, faster construction and lower running costs. These considerations will drive the selection of plant components and shape the future of water treatment.

Modern plants are grouped into pretreatment, makeup, polishing and distribution sections.

Pretreatment equipment is tailored to the feed water source. Water from a municipal plant requires less treatment than that from a surface source, such as a river or well. Makeup systems often use reverse osmosis and deionization to remove most of the contaminants, with the polishing plant using another stage of deionization and ultrafiltration for the last traces. Distribution piping maintains water purity until it reaches the point of use. High-purity materials prevent contamination of the product and withstand sanitization. Research into Teflon-related plastics and stainless steels is active in many areas.

Monitoring and controlling water plants is a critical function. Statistical process controls, failure modes and effects analyses, and probabilistic risk assessments will become more prominent.

Measurement of contaminants in the parts-per-billion range or lower places severe demands on instrumentation. Ion chromatography, mass spectrometry and specialized instruments for individual contaminants require substantial capital investment and running cost. Maintaining equipment without interrupting production is always a challenge. These considerations enhance the value of training to the overall operation; untrained individuals cannot keep the plant running at high levels.

Control of biological organisms in water is crucial in the biopharmaceutical industry. Water used in drugs for human use is regulated by the Food and Drug Administration. Live organisms, endotoxins and their associated pyrogenicity — fever producing components — must be evaluated and reduced or eliminated. Many different clean-in-place techniques are used in the food and biopharmaceutical industries to control microorganisms.

Anyone interested in serving on the Technical Committee should visit www.asme.org/divisions/pid/ techcommittees.html.

back to news & features