By Graham K. Rogers

With most forms of traditional industrial plant, there are often recognised pollution problems as well as costs involved, both with the day to day running of the installation and with the necessary cleanup processes.

Singapore Epson Industrial Pte Ltd. has installations for manufacturing semiconductors and for metal plating. The latter particularly has problems with the disposal of polluting chemicals and heavy metals. Implementation of systems that rely heavily on recycling have not only reduced pollution, but eased the costs of disposal and increased efficiency at the plant.

There are six major ways in which improvements have been made:

• Recycling waste water has been improved by the use of special filters that do away with the need for treatment. This has also saved space and reduced the cost of chemical agents;

• Reusing nickel has been effected by the development of an electrochemical process that recovers the metal in the plating liquid which had previously been disposed of;

• Reduced electricity use has been made possible by the introduction of solar panels and heat pumps, thus avoiding the use of expensive electric heaters which would have also needed changing annually;

• Hydrochloric acid is now reused with a system for recycling the chemical, thus reducing waste and saving costs for disposal and purchase;

• A dehumidifying dryer has made it possible to reduce electricity use by 45% as well as providing other advantages such as the reduced discoloration of plastic parts, the ability to process parts online and a reduction in drying times;

• Potassium permanganate is recycled with a system introduced that means the chemical can be constantly reused, waste chemicals have been reduced by 95%, chemical use reduced by 90%, and the cost of installing machinery has also been brought down.

More information is available from the Epson Global website.

Graham K. Rogers teaches at the Faculty of Engineering, Mahidol University in Thailand where he is also Assistant Dean. He wrote in the Bangkok Post, Database supplement on IT subjects. For the last seven years of Database he wrote a column on Apple and Macs.