Research of reduction carbon dioxide emission by applying microalgae biotech in semiconductor factory

Ching-Lung, Cheng
(Powerchip Technology)

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Industrial activities have improved human life, but also have increased greenhouse gases (GHG) emission into atmosphere, to cause the rising of the Earths average temperature and the other serious environmental problems. For solving these problems, there are many carbon reduction technologies are under development and application fast, such as physical treatment, chemical treatment and biological fixation. Today we plant a lot of trees to fix and transfer carbon dioxide(carbon sink) for the sake of carbon reduction. Therefore, carbon capture and storage have also been considered as an indispensable option to reduce carbon emission. Extensive research has been conducted to evaluate the feasibility of large-scale permanent carbon storage in oil fields and ocean beds. These carbon storage methods appear to be the potential solution for carbon reduction, but the highly cost, long-term stability, carbon reduction effect remains questionable. Microbial photosynthesis, particularly by microalgae, is now being reconsidered as a viable technology to reduce carbon. These processes are also attractive because the microbial extracts may possess substantial commercial values such as dietary supplements and fuels. In this study, we design an integrated CO2 biofixation system that consists of three parts, including CO2 scrubber system, and submerged membrane harvesting system. A laboratory-scale system was built to investigate the technical feasibility, and the pilot-scale system has been subsequently installed on semiconductor manufacture factory to reduce CO2 that emit from boiler process exhaust. The boiler use nature gas as fuel, and its exhaust contain CO2 about rather consistent at 16.1% and its temperature fluctuates between 50 and 60°C. We used wet scrubber to wash CO2 into water and supplied the carbon resource to grow microalgae in the close-loop photobioreactors, and microbial photosynthesis processes are designed to achieve faster growth rate, better carbon fixation efficiency, and greater growth density, then we generate and gain the concentrated microalgae in the membrane harvesting system. Microalgal CO2 Fixation appear to be a potential solution for carbon reduction in the semiconductor fab. In the future, we will plan to combine regenerating energy to develope a cost-effective energy-saving systems and try to test the large module. The test results will provide reliable data to reduce carbon emissions in the semiconductor fab.

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