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Fertilizer Dump Spoils Intel's Pure Water

Posted by timothy on from the what-if-they-were-making-whiskey dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Intel had to shut down part of its Irish plant for a while because of the extreme cold and the fact the local council polluted the water supply with fertilizer. Apparently it got down to -12 degrees C at the Intel plant in Leixlip, County Kildare. But to make matters worse, the local council ran out of rock salt to grit the roads and opted for fertilizer instead. There were fears that ammonia and nitrates in the fertilizer might have contaminated the local water supply. The problem for the chipmaker is that it needs extremely pure water for its manufacturing processes."

6 of 211 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Water Filters? Hello? by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Somebody did not consider the long-term consequences of their acts. Apparently, whether that was on the Intel or County Kildare side is currently unknown.

    But if they have to distill their water anyway, I don't see the problem. Unless the salts mess up their still.

  2. What a fucked up move by Masa · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Why they even bother salting roads when there is -12 degrees Celsius? Salting is only sensible when there is about -4 degrees (at least that is a rule of thumb here in Finland). Also, using fertilizers is so completely boneheaded move because that's plain and simple polluting. I guess that someone made a risk analysis and decided that polluting groundwater supplies causes less deaths than icy roads. But I can't help but wonder what the long-term effects are for environment and groundwater.

    1. Re:What a fucked up move by zoney_ie · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Actually for about 3 weeks there were only about 3 days where there was a thaw at midday - and that was the situation further south. It was pretty dramatic weather for somewhere that normally has relatively mild winters (even the usual week or two of more extreme weather is just a few degrees below freezing at night, and as you say, about zero by day). The outdoor temperature one morning at 10:30 AM (admittedly an hour and a half to go till midday) was -11C with freezing fog causing rather pretty ice constructions to stealthily grow on every surface!

      The council's actions were pretty much an act of desperation. It was awkward enough over the Christmas holidays (and people did die on the roads) but once people went back to work, with supplies pretty much exhausted and neighbours all having to conserve rock salt too, things were pretty dire.

      We'd have been completely snookered but for some investment in winter gear for the councils during the boom years. Previously in the 80s/90s a lot of councils probably would only have had a pick-up truck with guys with shovels to spread grit - now there are fleets of gritters with snowplough attachments and also supporting off-road vehicles with plough attachments - plus afaik some councils in parts of the country where it is more necessary have actual snowploughs too. However circumstances were nevertheless exacerbated by councils having limited 2009 budget left for paying overtime, so some of this kit stayed at home during Christmas.

      Things were bad enough that parts of the motorway network were temporarily reduced to one lane operation, and there was consideration given to closing even some major routes if the thaw hadn't arrived when it did.

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  3. Similar thing happened to Inmos in the 70's by twisting_department · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Strangely enough Inmos had a similar pollution problem caused by the local water company in south Wales:

    What had actually happened, as we found out three months later, was that on Christmas Eve the engineers at the local reservoir decided to celebrate. They were supposed to stay on site, so what they did was to dump 100 times the standard level of chlorine into the water supply, then go off and have a Christmas party. That chlorine totally ruined our semiconductor plant. The result was that the Americans said, "These Brits don't know what they're doing. Get rid of them!". The semiconductor facility was taken away and put under the control of the Americans who were deemed to understand these things.

    Seems the the Yanks can't defend themselves against this sort of thing either! http://www.cs.manchester.ac.uk/CCS/res/res33.htm/

  4. Re:Water Filters? Hello? by DrRobert · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The water used for chip manufacture is a very ultrapure water created through an involved process using mixed media beds, filters, and reverse osmosis membranes. The fertilizer would have never made it to the chip but would have likely fouled the ultrapure water production equipment as it needs repetitively clean feed water. The molecules in the water actually etch the surface of the silicone if they are not removed. - according to an ultrapure water production class I attended.

  5. Re:Water Filters? Hello? by PhysicsPhil · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I work in a semiconductor foundry, although not something on the scale of Intel. Foundries need ultrapure water not to get electrical insulation, but to remove contamination. Sodium, for example, acts as a mobile charge centre in silicon dioxide and changes the electrical properties of the devices.

    Foundries use reverse osmosis filters (not distillation) to get their deionized water, where they push water at pressure through a semipermeable membrane (i.e. permeable to water, not contaminants). RO membranes can get destroyed by unexpected contaminants, and so usually there are prefilters in place to take care of them. Some years ago we lost a (very expensive) membrane when the prefilter was accidentally swapped out but not replaced. My guess is that the fertilizer in the water supply had something that the prefilters/RO membrane couldn't handle, or couldn't handle so much of. Either they lost the membrane or shut things down as a precaution.