There will be a growing demand for ultrapure water (UPW) in the coming years due largely to the growth of the semiconductor industry, Ashish Bhandari, MD & CEO of Pune-based Thermax Ltd., said in an interview.
“Depending on how some of these industries evolve, you’re talking about an order of magnitude increase in the needs of the industry from a volume perspective,” Mr. Bhandari said.
UPW is far purer than bottled mineral water, and is held to far more stringent standards than even distilled water. Ashwini Vaishnaw, the Union Minister for Electronics and Information Technology, said in June that Micron Technology’s planned semiconductor packaging plant in Gujarat would need ultrapure water, and that it would be “manufactured” by using nano-membranes to filter out impurities.
The water is used to wash semiconductors, whose circuitry is so small that even microscopic contaminants would irreversibly damage chips churned out by such specialised manufacturing facilities. UPW is also used in drug discovery and by food manufacturing firms, Mr. Bhandari said, adding that Thermax had expressed interest in a few semiconductor projects at a pre-bid stage. The top executive at Thermax, which offers water treatment solutions including desalination plants, however, declined to reveal any further details.
The process of making UPW is not simple, especially in India: potable water from the ground is scarce, and domestic and farm consumption strains these reserves, leading to shortages from time to time.
“You can see more semiconductor plants that India is looking to put out are coming close to the ocean,” Mr. Bhandari said. “The reason … is because they can export [easily], but one other reason is that you have access to clean water.” Not quite clean, though; ocean and sea water has to be desalinated first, and then put through mechanical and chemical processes needed to expunge solids, organic material, gases, and other contaminants so as to reach a level where the output is pure H2O — thousands of litres of it, every day.
“I think the need for industrial water itself in India will continue to go up and along with that… water needs will also go up,” Mr. Bhandari said, pointing to other industries such as solar panel manufacturing.
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