Every fab has a waste strategy. Some focus on compliance and cost control; others on sustainability and resource efficiency. What’s changing now is the expectation that these goals can’t be separated. Leading fabs aren’t just trying to remove contaminants anymore. Instead, they’re designing systems that recover, reuse, and regenerate the materials they once paid to discard.
That shift is at the heart of the ARRO™ Program, a coordinated framework that helps manufacturers turn waste chemistry into a measurable sustainability advantage.
From Treatment to Transformation
Traditional wastewater treatment in semiconductor facilities has always followed a clear objective: remove what’s harmful, discharge what’s safe. The process works, but it works by elimination. Every metal captured and every acid neutralized is gone for good, along with the resources and energy used to create them.
ARRO™ rethinks that model. Instead of treating waste as the endpoint, it turns recovery into a parallel process. Metals are captured as high-purity solids, oxidants are safely neutralized, and strong acids are regenerated for reuse or offtake. The result is a treatment ecosystem that doesn’t just make water clean, it keeps materials in circulation.
Why the Shift Is Happening Now
Semiconductor fabs already manage their chemistry with extraordinary precision. They know the composition of every rinse bath and reclaim loop in real time. But as sustainability metrics become board-level priorities, it’s no longer enough to meet discharge limits; the new benchmark is resource circularity.
ARRO™ fits directly into that evolution. It helps fabs convert operational control into environmental performance by leveraging infrastructure they already have: collection tanks, chemical delivery systems, and analytical monitoring. The change isn’t wholesale; it’s additive; an upgrade that aligns existing systems with modern sustainability expectations.
How ARRO™ Works Across the Fab
ARRO™ is designed to connect the dots between waste streams and value streams. It supports three core functions: asset recovery, acid regeneration, and responsible reuse or offtake.
- Asset recovery captures dissolved metals like copper or manganese directly from solution, producing pure solids rather than sludge.
- Acid regeneration removes metals and oxidants to restore high-strength chemistry such as sulfuric, phosphoric, or mixed acids for further use.
- Reuse or offtake coordination ensures that regenerated acids can either flow back into compatible fab processes or be transferred safely to verified external partners.
Each function is modular, allowing fabs to start where the impact is highest, whether that’s metal recovery, acid reuse, or complete chemical loop closure.
What the Results Look Like
Across active sites, the ARRO™ framework has shown that circular chemistry isn’t a concept — it’s a measurable operational improvement. Fabs using ARRO™-aligned recovery have seen:
- hauling and disposal costs reduced by more than 75%,
- over 20 million tons of CO₂e avoided per 1,000 wafer starts, and
- hundreds of thousands of liters of acid reused safely within process.
These outcomes don’t come from adding chemicals or complexity; they come from removing the need for both.
Rewriting the Rules of Waste Chemistry
The semiconductor industry has never lacked precision. What ARRO™ brings is purpose: a way to apply that same precision to the sustainability side of the fab. By connecting recovery, reuse, and offtake within a single coordinated program, fabs are proving that environmental progress doesn’t have to compete with performance or cost.
The next generation of fabs won’t just treat waste. They’ll transform it.
ARRO™ helps semiconductor manufacturers recover assets, regenerate acids, and enable circular reuse at scale.