Recycling

Qitaihe moves toward recycling economy

By Qiu Yinuo (China Daily)
Updated: 2008-08-21 08:35

Qitaihe, the only pilot city for coal recycling in Heilongjiang, has stepped up efforts to become an important coal chemical and electricity base in the northeastern province.

The city plans further development of its coking coal, coal-chemical, electricity and new construction materials sectors, according to the city government.

Local officials said development of coal recycling is "of significance for sustainable development and environment protection" for the city.

The approach will make full use of coal with less pollution, the government said.

To develop coal recycling, Qitaihe established a 2.6 billion yuan database for 59 coal recycling projects. Almost all coal-chemical factories in the city now use state-of-the-art coal recycling equipment.

The city has introduced three new furnaces that help increase annual production capacity to more than 5 million tons of coke.

The city has built three power plants, which mostly use silt coal and coal tailings, and two large environmentally friendly coal gas-fired generators, each with an installed capacity of 50,000 kW.

Qitaihe has attracted numerous new projects that have a total investment of more than 20 billion yuan to develop coal recycling.

Among them, 25 projects are each capitalized with 100 million yuan. Coking projects have a combined investment of more than 3 billion yuan.

Facing the investment boom, local authorities are determined to decline to heavily polluting projects.

They have already rejected five that had a combined investment value of up to 500 million yuan.

In 2007, Qitaihe consumed 4 million tons of coal tailings and silt coal to generate electricity and used 650,000 cu m of tailings and coal ash to develop new construction materials.

About 75 percent of the city's solid industrial garbage was recycled for industrial reuse last year.

Emissions of carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide in Qitaihe were reduced by 280 tons and 470 tons respectively in 2007.

It is estimated that the annual direct economic returns in the city from coal recycling will reach more than 800 million yuan, industrial value increased by 15 percent.

(China Daily 08/21/2008 page4)