[labnetwork] Electroless Ni waste management?

[Shawn Wright]

Hi Tim,

You could look into caswellplating, they have an EN Nickel process/kit and basically they take a couple steps to plate out all of the nickel in the solution so that it’s no longer hazardous. Their products aren't geared towards semi work, but you might be able to do something similar for the Transene process.

Thanks,
Shawn Wright
Lead Research Engineer
Operations Group, Lurie Nanofabrication Facility
University of Michigan


> On Feb 3, 2021, at 4:17 PM, Tim Gilheart <gilheart at rice.edu> wrote:
> 
> Greetings all,
> 
> The Rice cleanroom team is working with our counterparts in Environmental Health & Safety to identify best practices for managing the waste generated by the electroless nickel plating process our users now need us to support.
> 
> This process is based on Transene’s Nickelex product (https://transene.com/ni/ <https://transene.com/ni/>), and we do not have a dedicated plating bench. Our users anticipate working with beaker-scale quantities, which our staff team believes we can properly support at our acid bench.
> 
> Our EHS colleague is concerned about the amount of Ni in solution the leftover plating bath will generate, and is uncertain if our waste treatment system will be sufficient. Our treatment system treats all our waste water with sodium bicarbonate and treats with NaOH/H2SO4 as needed to meet the pH specs we’ve set. 
> 
> We’re expecting plating waste to be 1-L per day or less on average, and our wastewater outflow exceeds a thousand gallons per day. We may be close to acceptable Ni levels in the waste stream (2.0 ppm locally) already, just by volume alone, but this is probably not ideal.
> 
> I’m sure managing electroless nickel waste is routine for a good number of you on the list, so we’d appreciate any insights you can share.
> 
> Thanks in advance!
> 
> -- 
> Tim Gilheart, Ph.D.
> Research Scientist - Nanofabrication Cleanroom Manager,
> Shared Equipment Authority (SEA), Rice University
> Cell: 832-341-5488 | Office: 713-348-3159 | gilheart at rice.edu <mailto:gilheart at rice.edu>
> 
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