Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1517668
12 PCB007 MAGAZINE I MARCH 2024 European centralized treatment facilities, and put them into some of the new fab shops. Boil- ing chemistry is the biggest cost driver in this system. rough my travels and due diligence, I oen extract ideas from other industries, and my most recent significant process discovery provides a nearly 95% reduction in the chemi- cal boiling cost for ZLD. Barry Matties: That is tremendous for ROI. How are you accomplishing that? Specifically for larger systems, the big savings come from an electrochemical technology that originated in the uranium mining industry, but I have about half a dozen methods for smaller and mid-size systems that are also very effi- cient, depending on which chemistries I am dealing with in each situation. It depends on how much you have to invest, and whether it is some type of retrofit, as to what you end up with for kit. I am also doing these sys- tem installations as upgrades to existing plants, where we can even reuse some components and avoid any down- time. Matties: You are focused on the source of energy to create the heat. Is that where the cost is? Yes, the focus is reducing energy use and reducing CO 2 . With boil- i n g , t h e r e a r e t w o s t a g e s : a n evaporator and a f inal cr ystal- lizer. The evapor ator con- centrates the chemi- cals, and the crystal- lizer performs the solid c o nv e r s i o n . I h av e been able to eliminate the evaporator—the biggest cost of the sys- tem—and go directly to the crystallizer with a concentrated brine. Since the energy gen- eration required for the evaporator generally leads to a massive CO 2 footprint in addition to the high OpEx, this is a needed improvement. e energy requirements become small enough with this approach that we not only save money but we can also use a renewable source of energy. is eliminates the mega-CO 2 foot- print of the first-generation system architec- ture, which I invented and patented at Green- Source, and which independently co-evolved slightly differently in the Indian market around the same time. Matties: Did this reduce cycle time? Absolutely. It is a much faster process as well, with large-scale economies. My previous sys- tems work was at OEMs in the U.S. market where they are building expensive parts, but the technology will never take off in the global regions where most circuit boards are made because it's too expensive, unless you get government intervention and subsi- dies, or are desperate because you are faced with either going ZLD or closing the doors. Also, rely- ing on evaporation/boiling leads to a very large CO 2 foot- print b e c a u s e a l m o s t nobody is making the energy for this from renewables. W h e n s o m u c h of the green push comes from Sili- con Valley companie s pu shing CO 2 reduction, it won't exactly go viral when you are increasing the CO 2 footprint by an order of magnitude just to go ZLD. Our new design solves this, and it's about half the capital price of the orig- inal systems sold in the U.S. market. It is now even an attractive capi- tal purchase for fabs in India, many of which h a v e a l r e a d y b e e n ZLD for 10 years. Wastewater crystallizer.