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The Environmental Cost of Silicon Chips
Col. Panic writes "Scientific American is running a small story about the amount of material required to produce silicon chips and the potential hazards of associated toxic chemicals." This combined with coltan mining processes sure paints a dark picture of the chip industry.
What are the alternatives. I understand that people compain about other people using cars that use excessive amounts of fuel, but there is no better way to make microchips yet, or is there?
Important safety note: When working in such a place, always wash your hands up to the elbows before going to the bathroom, or rubbing your eyes. I've been told that sulfuric on the willy is an unforgettable experience...
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One thing I've often wondered is whether a typical solar cell produces more energy in its lifetime than it takes to manufacture it?
Don't worry, our grandkids can clean it up. Luckily, they'll have plenty of oil wealth to help them do it.
No, wait...
</sarcasm> aside, this just goes to show that capitalism means cutting off your nose to pay for your facelift.
Oh, sorry, my <sarcasm> must have been nested, along with a <mixed metaphore>. But really, why is this a suprise to anyone? Our entire economy is based on the premise that the lowest bidder is always the best one. Without artificial (read: gubmint) controls (which we're not going to get under undisputed reign of George II), using the cheapest process without regard for the consequences is inevitable. It's actually the fiduciary duty of the execs in these industries to do this! If they were to switch to using a cleaner (but more expensive) process, they'd be sacked at best, and quite probably sued by their shareholders.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
The water is used for rinsing wafers, which happens many, many times in a typical chip process. The water is highly filtered and deionized before the wafers are washed, then is cleansed to remove the acids and solvents that are picked up during rinse cycles. So it is reusable, but only after minerals are added back to it. You cannot drink fab quality water because it a large concentration gradient would form and minerals from the other fluids in your body would be depleted by the migration into the ultra pure water.
I have subscribed for about 6 years, and I noticed that there have been more environmental articles, but I don't consider them to be preachy. They give some good environmental data, and ususally don't go into too much politics about it. I know recently there was a story on how some impoverished countries get a lot of our scrap electronics, and how they salvage metals from them. They point out how toxic this is to the people and the water supplies there. I like finding out about this stuff, because nobody else is reporting on it. We use a LOT of microchips, as do other countries. We need to know that there are dangers in this. Granted, I haven't read this article yet (I am a couple of months behind on my issues) but I'll bet that they are simply pointing out the environmental hazards of chip production, and as chip use increases, the hazards increase. Why is this such a bad thing to know? The more chips we produce, hopefully the better our processes will become, and eventually we will come up with a replacement technology that will make silicon obsolete. Hopefully this new technology will be more friendly to the environment. I'm no Moby, calling the turkey hotline to save the widdle turkeys, but I think we do need to consider our environment.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
With enviroment it's always easy to look at the expenses but what about the benefits of microprocessors on the enviroment?
Think of waste-plants being monitored by computers so the waste is constantly being processed ideally.
But it's an interesting set of numbers, though.
My favorite chemical to imagine working with (when I worked at Texas Instruments and wandered around the 3rd floor pipe space looking at labels) was Silane. With a chemical formula just like Methane, with Silicon in the place of the Carbon, you'd imagine it would be explosive but not otherwise interesting. Wrong! Silane can spontaneously explode when exposed to air. It has to be specially ducted and burned off or blown out quickly enough to prevent creation of a flammable concentration. A friend of mine where I work now, though, had more direct experience with Silane while working at another semiconductor manufacturer. He claims that he once liberated a small volume of silane in the air, and found that it formed a bubble... the silane reacted with the air on the edge to form a protective shield around the remaining gas. Of course, when the bubble burst... the explosion was deafening. Strangely enough, I don't think my friend ever found the opportunity to experiment further. But should you care to try it yourself on a smaller scale, go for it!
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
I'd just like to point out that 1.6 kg of fossil fuel is less than half a gallon of gas, 32 kg of water is about 8 gallons, and the chemicals used are all processed before being released such that they have little environmental impact. So the environmental cost of buying that new chip is roughly equivalent to driving around the block and then taking a shower. And we do all take showers, right?