Integrated countercurrent reverse osmosis cascades for hydrogen peroxide ultrapurification

Abstract The chemicals and materials used to manufacture and package semiconductors and printed circuit boards are called electronic chemicals. The purity of these electronic chemicals, given by the industry association Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International (SEMI), is a very compromising concern for the semiconductor industrial sector, so very strict requirements are set to avoid microelectronic devices failures because of the content of impurities of electronic chemicals. For the particular case of hydrogen peroxide as one of the most consumed wet electronic chemicals, SEMI Document C30-1110 indicates five different electronic grades defined by their limiting impurities content. The semiconductor industry is appearing as an emerging application of reverse osmosis membranes based processes. After reviewing the patents published over the last twenty years about ultrapurification for industrial production of high purity electronic grade hydrogen peroxide, the referenced separation techniques can be replaced by reverse osmosis with lower operating expenses due to energy and chemicals. This work proposes a membrane process design based on an integrated countercurrent membrane cascade, in order to determine the optimum osmosis cascade for each SEMI Grade hydrogen peroxide, with the economic profit as the objective function in the optimization strategy. The results show the benefits of the reverse osmosis process, with profit values of 20–85 million $/year, for a target annual production of 9000 tons of electronic hydrogen peroxide, requiring the integrated reverse osmosis cascades of two stages for the production of Grade 1 to seven stages for the strictest Grade 5.