Bioremediation of Inorganic Copper from CMP Wastewater

Chemical Mechanical Planarization (CMP) is a technology used for polishing metals in the manufacture of Integrated Circuit (IC). These polishing slurries consist of 5 to 10 percent of very fine particles. The CMP process produces a waste effluent with a complex mixture of components such as copper ions and silica or/and alumina nanoparticles. The wastewater recycle and reuse is very important to IC industries because of the high volume of ultra pure water that is used for slurry dilution in CMP process. Copper concentrations in CMP and post-CMP cleaning effluents range from 1 to 25 mg/L (Ogden et al, 2006). Effluents containing copper are considered to be hazardous. This toxic heavy metal must be removed from the waste stream for a possible reuse of this water or to meet environmental requirements for its discharge. The objective of this research project is to study the treatment of copper in the CMP wastewater by bioremediation using Staphylococcus sp. Soil Y5 bacteria. It is known by previous experiments that both, living and non living biomass can remove copper from CMP wastewater. In this research, a process was established to study the copper removal from CMP wastewater by Staphylococcus sp. Soil Y5 bacteria and the effect of particle in the biotreatment.