For the technology manufacturing industry, thermal environments are not just a basic utility but a critical factor directly impacting production efficiency, product quality, operational costs, and even industrial layout. Below is an analysis from three perspectives: its importance, application scenarios, and future trends.
❄️ The Importance of Thermal Environments
The sensitivity of technology manufacturing to temperature is primarily reflected in three areas: Production Efficiency, Product Quality and Yield Rate, and Energy Consumption & Operational Costs.
Direct Impact on Production Efficiency
Research indicates that high temperatures can significantly negatively affect productivity in manufacturing. Data from nearly 500,000 Chinese manufacturing firms shows an “inverted U-shaped” relationship between temperature and total factor productivity. When temperatures exceed a certAIn threshold (e.g., 90°F, ~32°C), each such high-temperature day can cause a factory’s total factor productivity to drop by 0.56%, with output falling by 0.45%. This is mainly because high temperatures affect workers’ physical capacity and can reduce the operational efficiency of machinery.
Critical for Product Quality and Production Yield
In high-end manufacturing sectors like semiconductors, high-performance batteries, and carbon fiber, fluctuations in the production environment’s temperature directly affect core product performance and final yield rates.
Semiconductor Manufacturing: During semiconductor wafer fabrication, many key steps (such as atomic layer deposition and etching) occur under extreme temperatures and require extremely precise temperature control. Loss of temperature control can lead to uneven film thickness or distorted features, directly causing chips to fail performance standards or become scrap.
Material Manufacturing: For instance, in carbon fiber production in Xining, cool/cold environments have been proven to help increase the crystallinity of carbon fiber, thereby enhancing its strength and rigidity.
Impacts Energy Consumption and Operational Costs
Energy used for temperature control (especially cooling) constitutes a major portion of operational costs in technology manufacturing. Effective management of thermal environments can yield significant energy-saving and cost-reduction benefits.
Data Centers: Cooling can account for up to 40% of a data center’s total electricity consumption. Utilizing the cold climate of places like Finland or Xining as a “natural air conditioner,” or adopting more efficient Liquid Cooling technologies, can drastically reduce this energy use.
Industrial Cooling System Optimization: TSMC used AI to optimize the chilled water system in its wafer fabs, achieving energy savings of 8% to 17%, saving up to 120 million kWh of electricity annually.
Direct Cost Savings from Climatic Advantage: A circuit board manufacturer in Liupanshui, Guizhou, leveraging the local summer average of 19°C “cool” climate, avoided the need for extensive industrial air conditioning, saving over one million yuan in production costs monthly.
🏭 Application Scenarios and Typical Cases
Temperature control technologies and specific thermal environments are already widely applied in technology manufacturing. Here are some typical scenarios:
Data Centers & Computing Infrastructure: From “Air Cooling” to “Liquid Cooling”
With the explosion in AI computing demand and soaring chip power consumption, traditional air cooling is reaching its limits. Liquid cooling technology is becoming the new trend due to its higher heat dissipation efficiency and superior energy performance (PUE can be as low as 1.1 or below). The Yangtze River Delta’s first fully-immersed liquid cooling Intelligent computing center in Wuhu, Anhui, achieved a “full liquid cooling closed loop,” reducing energy consumption and carbon emissions by more than 50%.
Semiconductor Manufacturing: Extremely Precise Temperature Control
Semiconductor manufacturing has extremely stringent requirements for temperature control, spanning the entire production chain:
Production Process: Requires chilled water systems to maintain constant temperature and humidity in cleanrooms, ensuring the stability of precision processes like lithography and etching.
Process Itself: Advanced etching technologies (like Lam’s Cryo 3.0) require reaction chamber temperatures as low as -20°C or even -40°C, posing significant challenges to the materials and design of thermal management systems.
Precision Manufacturing & Materials Industry: “Cool/Cold” as a Competitive Advantage
PCB Production: Highly sensitive to workshop temperature and humidity. In Liupanshui, Guizhou, Weihao Circuit Technology utilizes the natural cool climate to stabilize workshop temperature within the ideal range without extra cooling, significantly reducing production costs.
Photovoltaics & Lithium Batteries: In Xining, the cool, dry climate not only helps lower lithium battery production costs but also improves the production stability and efficiency of solar cells.
🔮 Future Trends and Strategic Considerations
Facing global climate change and “Dual Carbon” goals, the management and utilization of thermal environments are showing new trends:
Deep Integration of Climate and Industrial Layout
The “East Data, West Computing” project locates numerous data centers in cool, green-energy-rich western provinces (like Qinghai, Xining, Wuhu, Anhui), precisely leveraging their dual advantages of natural cooling sources and clean energy. In the future, more high-precision, high-energy-consumption, “cold-sensitive” industries may cluster in such regions.
Intelligent Thermal Management Becoming a Core Competitiveness
Simple temperature control is evolving into systematic intelligent thermal management. For example, companies like Moon Environment use industrial internet and large models to Provide customers with integrated energy-carbon management systems, making energy savings and emission reductions quantifiable and optimizable. This marks a shift for temperature management from a cost center to a value center.
Continuous Breakthroughs in Extreme Temperature Technology
To meet the demand for extreme low temperatures (like -100°C or even -200°C) in semiconductors, new materials, and other fields, cutting-edge technologies like vacuum insulation and new thermal insulation materials are rapidly developing. Simultaneously, industrial heat pump technology is actively recovering medium- and low-temperature waste heat, transforming “waste heat” into an “urban mine.”
💎 Summary
In conclusion, for the technology manufacturing industry, thermal environments have evolved from a basic support function to a strategic element. Skillfully utilizing natural cooling sources, developing intelligent temperature control, and advancing extreme temperature technologies can not only directly reduce costs and improve efficiency but are also key to driving the industry’s green transformation and shaping the future competitive landscape of manufacturing.
