US 6,146,266 AGranted

Method and apparatus for providing a purified resource in a manufacturing facility

AssigneeCH2MHill Industrial Design Corporation

InventorsMichael D O'Halloran, Wilmar A Kohne, Stephen W Nelson

Life of this patent

Estimating the term…

Loading patent…

Abstract

A method and apparatus provides a resource capable of affecting the manufacture of a product to a bay and a chase. Clean resource is supplied to the bay where it is used to affect the manufacture of a product in one or more steps highly sensitive to contaminants in the resource. The resource contaminated by the manufacture of the product is then sent to a chase where it is further used to affect the manufacture of the same or a different product in steps that are less sensitive to the contamination of the resource. Because the bay is most sensitive to contaminants in the resource, the impurified resource received at the chase may not adversely affect the manufacture of products in the chase and thus, supplying a clean resource to the chase is unnecessary.

Claims12

Dependent claims

A method for affecting the manufacture of at least one product using a resource, comprising:

receiving a resource in a first chamber containing a first process for manufacturing at least one of the at least one product, the first manufacturing process having a first sensitivity to contamination of the resource;
in the first chamber, affecting the manufacture of at least one of the at least one product with the resource received;
contaminating the resource responsive to the affecting the manufacture step;
providing at least a portion of the contaminated resource to a second chamber containing a second process for manufacturing at least one of the at least one product, the second manufacturing process having a sensitivity, lower then the first sensitivity, to contamination of the resource;
and
in the second chamber, affecting the manufacture of at least one of the at least one product using the contaminated resource portion provided.

3 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.