Computers and Chemical Engineering 41 (2012) 67–76 Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect Computers and Chemical Engineering jo u rn al hom epa ge : www.elsevier.com/locate/compchemeng Modeling, numerical analysis and simulation Integrated countercurrent reverse osmosis cascades for hydrogen peroxide ultrapurification R. Abejón ∗ , A. Garea, A. Irabien Departamento de Ingeniería Química y Química Inorgánica, Universidad de Cantabria, Avda. Los Castros s/n, 39005 Santander, Cantabria, Spain a r t i c l e i n f o Article history: Received 13 July 2011 Received in revised form 20 February 2012 Accepted 22 February 2012 Available online 3 March 2012 Keywords: Reverse osmosis Membrane cascades Hydrogen peroxide Ultrapurification Wet electronic chemicals a b s t r a c t 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 chem- icals. 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 perox- ide, 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 pro- duction 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. © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Membrane separation processes have experienced a great development in the last two decades allowing a wide range of industrial applications. Abundant alternatives can be configured through adequate combinations of microfiltration (MF), ultrafiltra- tion (UF), nanofiltration (NF) and reverse osmosis (RO). The exact system design is dependant of multiple factors, including physi- cal and chemical properties of the stream to be treated, nature of target separation substances, intrinsic separation efficiencies and economic considerations. The main advantage of a membrane based process is that separation is achieved with neither a change of state (no thermal energy required) nor use of auxiliary chem- icals. Membranes provide a fine separation barrier, allowing for specific chemicals to be separated mainly as function of their size or molecular weight (Fig. 1). Focusing on reverse osmosis, it was the first membrane based separation process to be widely commercialized (Baker et al., 1991). The characteristic dense semipermeable reverse ∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +34 942201579; fax: +34 942201591. E-mail address: abejonr@unican.es (R. Abejón). osmosis membrane (highly permeable to water and imperme- able to microorganisms, colloids, dissolved salts and organics) was the key that paved the way to desalination boom. Desalina- tion of sea and brackish waters is nowadays the main source for supplying fresh water in the regions suffering scarcity of natu- ral freshwater sources (Ibá ˜ nez Mengual, 2009). Besides the typical application to desalination purposes, reverse osmosis has been successfully implemented for several other technical practices in various productive sectors: food processing industries (Gurak, Cabral, Rocha-Leao, Matta, & Freitas, 2010), mining and metallurgi- cal activities (Benito & Ruiz, 2002), pulp and paper sector (Restolho, Prates, de Pinho, & Afonso, 2009) and municipal wastewater (Pérez, Fernández-Alba, Urtiaga, & Ortiz, 2010) and many industrial efflu- ent treatments (Das, DasGupta, & De, 2010). Also the semiconductor industry is appearing as an emerg- ing new guest for the application of reverse osmosis membranes based processes. The chemicals and materials used to manufac- ture and package semiconductors and printed circuit boards are called electronic chemicals (Daigle, Vogelsberg, Lim, & Butcher, 2007). The purity of these electronic chemicals is a very com- promising 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 0098-1354/$ – see front matter © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.compchemeng.2012.02.017