- Rapid development with the concept of integrated waste management
Beijing Chaoyang Environment Group Co., Ltd. invested, built and operated the Beijing Chaoyang Circular Economy Industrial Park (hereinafter referred to as “The Park”), which is a leading comprehensive eco-park in China with the function of processing multi-source, multi-type and large-scale municipal solid waste. The Park has shown a strong sense of social responsibility in ensuring the sustainable operation of the city, promoting the harmonious development of the community, and strengthening the public education of the citizens. The Park is the national leading circular economy industrial park with specialised Chaoyang characteristics, Beijing culture and global vision.
1.1. From waste disposal to industrial ecology park
The Park is located in Chaoyang District, Beijing, covering an area of nearly 3 square kilometers, after more than 20 years of development, the Park has been gradually built from a municipal solid waste sanitary landfill into a large-scale, comprehensive industrial park for the synergetic treatment of municipal solid waste, food waste, construction waste and other multi-source solid waste. 7 treatment facilities were built in the Park including municipal solid waste treatment, food waste treatment, construction waste treatment, sanitary landfill, medical waste treatment, waste materials recycling and other industrial facilities, with a daily processing capacity of more than 8,000 tons. The Park’s achievements in the synergetic treatment of municipal solid waste in industrial park settings have been acknowledged by UN-Habitat as an good practice, and has won more than 100 national, provincial and ministerial honors, such as the National Resource Recycling Base, the National Top Ten Environmental Protection Facilities, the Green and Low-Carbon Demonstration Project by Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, and Industrial Park Collaborative Innovation Pilot for Pollution Reduction and Carbon Reduction by the Ministry of Ecology and Environment.
1.2 How to achieve the integrated treatment in the Park
The Park has connected the material flows and energy flows between different industries and formed the material utilization cycles of waste to renewable energy, waste to renewable resources and waste to recycled products. The Park has built the cascade utilization system of energy based on water, gas, electricity and heat circulation between industries. Based on the strong technical and professional foundation in municipal solid waste, food waste and leachate treatment, the Park has established several innovative technological systems for the synergetic treatment of waste. For example, the technology system of waste incineration involves feed control, odour control, furnace temperature control, slag control, whole process safety control and all the equipment sets; the technology system for food waste treatment involves the optimal ratio of restaurant food waste/household food waste, and the integrated utilization technology of biogas. With all the complete and advanced technologies, the systematic, integrated and standardized treatment of solid waste has been achieved in the Park.
The Park has achieved a producing capacity of green power of 600 million kWh/year, crude grease of 5,000 tons/year, and renewable resources and renewable products of more than 4,000 tons/day, reducing CO2 emissions by nearly 1.6 million tons per year, which is equivalent to the total CO2 emissions of nearly 2.7 million people for their daily lives.
1.3. Social benefits and social responsibility
The Park has become a teaching and research practice base for Tsinghua University, Peking University and other universities. Through industry-university research cooperation, the Park has made industry implementation in several key topics, including leachate total nitrogen removal, concentrated leachate treatment, and resource utilization of construction waste. In terms of public education, the Park has designed specialized software and hardware with easy connection to the public, and this whole system has been awarded a national demonstration base for both circular economy and environmental protection and education. Since 2009, thousands of international and domestic exchanges have been visited here, with about 200,000 visitors from more than 60 countries and regions, and with further dissemination to more than 20 million people. The Park has established a friendly neighbour-sharing and co-construction mechanism with the surrounding residents, successfully turning the “NIMBY effect” into a “Neighborhood Benefit Effect”.
- 2. Towards a smart and low-carbon future
The Park continuously enhances the recycling efficiency and the intelligent management level, and improves “One + Four” management mechanisms, with the comprehensive solid waste treatment business as the one main target and the high-quality utilization of resources, efficient use of energy, pollutant emission reduction and greenhouse gas neutralization as the four key beneficiaries, so as to embody the low-carbon and green value achieved by the Park.
2.1. Improvement in synergetic treatment and transformation to intellectualized management
The Park has improved the comprehensive treatment capacity and environmental protection level of various solid waste facilities through upgrading and expanding the existing facilities and building new supporting facilities. By strengthening the circular production and the integration of industries, the Park will strengthen the synergy of resources and energy, and improve the efficiency of comprehensive utilization of energy and resources. By promoting the extension of the front-end and tail-end of the industrial chains, the circular economy model will be established with consideration of all the perspective of energy/process/facility/ management, within which waste-to-energy as the core facility. The intelligent management platform is planned for the whole Park, and big data analysis and information mining will be used to realize the intellectualized integration and optimization of various resources and energy allocation. The Park will become a pioneering and intellectualized circular economy industrial park with leading influence globally.
2.2. Technological innovation and low-carbon development
With the concept of “green, zero-carbon and intellectualization”, The Park has begun to lay out future-oriented technology development and independent innovation technology reservation. The Park is now ready to embrace the transformation towards intelligent and low-carbon industries and society. Focusing on the sub-areas of solid waste treatment and disposal and resource recycling, The Park strives to promote the process optimization, collaborative utilization, energy substitution, carbon resource utilization and other green and low-carbon technologies for the treatment of multiple solid wastes such as restaurant food waste/household food waste etc., promote the deep integration of innovation chain, industrial chain and value chain, and comprehensively enhance the independent innovation capacity of The Park. Establish a low-carbon development path of “front-end source carbon reduction, process management carbon reduction, and back-end treatment carbon replacement” to promote green, low-carbon and high-quality development of The Park.
2.3. Continuous extension the influence to community and other urban area
With the further promotion of low-carbon and intellectualized park, the comprehensive benefits of The Park to communities and urban areas will continue to be extended to the whole society and even to the world. Firstly, through the customized online and offline education training program, the target group of public training and awareness raising activities can be further enlarged. Secondly, the Park will continue to provide job opportunities for the surrounding communities and residents and continue to provide transparent management information for public communication, to improve public awareness and inclusiveness of waste management. Finally, the Park will continue to promote industry innovation, and to introduce the valuable experience to China and to the world.
