Pollution prevention and resource conservation for electronics industry: a case study in Istanbul

Abstract

Electronics industry consumes large amounts of hazardous chemical and process rinsing water which creates severe pollution load in process wastewater. Within this framework, the Cleaner Production (CP) application through resource conservation and waste reduction at source has been applied for the selected enterprise. The existing barriers that cover lack of recorded data and data collection systems were overcome during Organization and Planning Phase of the study. Also commitment of enterprise which was achieved as a result of a series of meetings and a seminar was continuously supplied throughout the study. During the assessment phase, process flow diagrams with material balances for selected production lines were conducted in order to identify the sources of the waste and emissions as well as the factors that influence volume and the composition of waste and emissions generated. Environmental performance indicators were calculated to determine the production lines with the highest annual production that in the meanwhile lead to excess amount of wastewater and chemical consumption. The generated list of audit focus points recommended to the manager who has selected and prioritized the CP options for further steps of study. Feasibility study covering technical, environmental and economic issues has been succeeded for the options on technology modification and reuse/recycling/recovery applications for chemical and water. These studies can be grouped as; substitution of “plasma desmear” and “closed loop cleaning system” in order to minimize both water consumption and hazardous waste production and “alkaline/micro etchant reuse/ recovery” systems to reduce hazardous etchant production. Another water saving issue covers application of counter current rinsing in metal plating department. Also, metal losts thourgh drag-out can be prevented by drag-out minimization methods. The feasibility results of the investigated CP options varied with payback periods of 1 month to 7.2 years. As a result of this, for the implantation phase, the CP options were categorized depending on their payback period and the ones with less than 2.5 years were considered for application.