Keeping Gas Safe

For manufacturers of semiconductors, there is no margin of error when it comes to safety. The volatile and hazardous gasses used in production requires great caution in handling and storage. Cylinder cabinets should therefore be utilized at all times. In fact, at no point from delivery through purging should a cylinder ever leave a cabinet. Even cylinders of dangerous gas that are properly stored are hazardous, but with good storage practices, the fallout from any potential hazard can be minimized.

First, cylinders should be stored away from production areas, in their own, isolated areas that are monitored with sensors. This is common practice in the chip industry. Even in the unlikely event that unperturbed, well-stored cylinders were to somehow leak or burst, the consequences could be contained and the damage to plant and people minimized. A storage area should not allow for any gas leak into production and should also contain sensors that can detect any leak.

Second, long inventories of hazardous materials should not be stored. Here, safe manufacturing practices align with good business practices, since keeping a lot of dangerous gas around is both unsafe and expensive from the standpoint of inventory management. When inventories must be held, they should be held in areas removed from production (as explained above) and held in cylinder cabinets suited to the cylinder size and the gas contained.

The most volatile gasses should usually be held in automatic gas cabinets that are equipped to put the gas to use. These cabinets incorporate many more safety features than a standard storage locker. Pressure sensors can react in a literal instant to any leak by triggering emergency shut-off valves that close the cylinder and can purge other delivery equipment to prevent contamination or an undesired reaction. sensors can detect heat or fire and extinguish it with on-board extinguishers should the need arise.

In summary, a cylinder cabinet is best employed for inert gasses. In this day of automatic gas cabinets, it might be irresponsible to forgo the safety provided by all of the monitoring and response capabilities they offer when it comes to the storage and handling of more volatile chemicals. If dangerous gasses must be held in inventory, they should be kept away from the clean-room, in a location whose environment cannot contaminate the clean-room environment or any place that people regularly work. While these precautions may seem extreme, they have kept one of the most quietly dangerous production processes running with far fewer incidents than other dangerous industries, keeping supply steady and costs low.