China Environ Prot (EP) Industry, Technology, Solid Waste Mgt, Liquid Treat: News & Discussions

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Converting waste plastic bottles into jet fuel | Research | Chemistry World
BY GERALDINE HAY 3 MAY 2019

Simple three-step process generates minimal waste and diverts plastic from landfill

Plastic waste from drinks bottles and food packaging can be transformed in a new process into cyclic and aromatic hydrocarbons, which can then be used as important components of diesel and jet fuel.

‘A huge amount of plastic is discarded after use, causing big environmental problems’, says green chemistry expert Liangnian He from Nankai University in China, who was not involved in this work. This issue has recently been gaining increasing global attention, with some calling for an all-out plastic ban. Others think the solution lies in converting this waste into valuable products and chemicals.

The three steps of the process are industrially compatible and designed with sustainability in mind

A team led by Hao Tang and Ning Li from the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics in China, has come up with a process to convert one of the most common plastics, poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET), into a mixture of C7 and C8 cycloalkanes and aromatics, suitable to be blended into jet fuels or diesel. ‘A lot of people are worrying about plastic waste. Why not convert it to something more useful, for example gasoline and bio-jet fuel?’ says Li.

The work also solves another issue. Aromatics are absorbed by polymer seals within the engine more readily than straight-chain alkanes in regular fuels. This causes the polymers to swell, and counteracts shrinkage caused by leaching of other molecules out of the seals, which helps prevent fuel leaks.

PET from plastic bottles is first broken down into dimethyl terephthalate (DMT) using methanol. Once the reactor has cooled down, the DMT settles as a solid and can be easily separated, allowing the remaining methanol to be re-used. The DMT is then converted into the desired hydrocarbons by hydrogenation followed by hydrodeoxygenation. These catalytic conversions are similar to established reactions, using fairly standard catalysts, so have the potential to be easily implemented industrially.

Both of these final steps are also solvent free – which avoids generating unnecessary waste streams – and use heterogeneous catalysts. Biofuel expert George Huber from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, US, explains that this makes the process ‘very green’ as there is no separation step and the catalyst ‘can stay in your reactor for years’.

The technique therefore appears to be a promising way to divert plastic waste away from landfill. The real test, however, may be in implementing the process commercially. ‘The challenge lies in getting a large enough quantity [of plastic waste] in a single location and with the economic incentive to recycle and recover the value’, says Huber. ‘I think it’s also going to require policy to allow us to use technology like this’.

References

H Tang et al, Green Chem., 2019, DOI: 10.1039/c9gc00571d​

 

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China sets differential emission limits for steel sector
Source:Global Times Published: 2019/5/5 21:22:58

Five government departments, including the Ministry of Ecology and Environment (MEE), released a document to support ultra-low emission standards in China's steel industry by setting limits that vary by category.

According to the document, which was sent by the MEE to the Global Times on Sunday, the government will set different emission limits and management measures for organized emissions, fugitive emissions as well as bulk material transportation.

The document also specifies different emission limits for different pollution sources including sintering machine heads.

These classifications show the "scientific nature" of the document, as the government has not adopted a one-size-fits-all system for managing emissions, He Kebin, an academician at the Chinese Academy of Engineering, wrote in an article that was also sent by the MEE to the Global Times.

According to the document, China will also increase policy support in such areas including taxation and financing policies, to companies that complete a transformation to ultra-low emissions.

The document also sets goals for steel emission modifications. The ultra-low emission modification in domestic steel companies in key regions will achieve "marked progress" by the end of 2020, with 60 percent of China's capacity likely to be transformed by that time. By the end of 2025, the process will be mostly finished in key industries of the country and more than 80 percent of steel capacity expected to be transformed.

According to He, implementation of the emission reforms will cause total emissions of particulates to decrease by 21 percent compared with the current level in North China's Jingjinji (Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei area) and surrounding areas, as well as by 20 percent in the Yangtze River Delta area.

 

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Nation achieves breakthrough to capture CO2
By Sun Haoran Source:Global Times Published: 2019/5/8 21:53:41

China has successfully implemented its first carbon sequestration project in saline aquifers in Ordos, North China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, symbolizing China's efforts to reduce greenhouse gases, which will have a great influence in emissions reduction.

The first 100,000-ton per year carbon capture and storage (CCS) demonstration project undertaken by an Ordos-based coal-to-liquids branch of China Energy is progressing smoothly, and relevant technical standards are being researched and developed, the Economic Information Daily reported on Wednesday.

"This is the first CCS project in saline aquifers in China, and also the only such project in Asia that has reached a 100,000-ton level," Wang Jianli, general manager of the company, told the Economic Information Daily.

"The successful implementation of the CCS demonstration project shows China has formed a complete set of technologies for carbon capture, transport, and storage in saline aquifers and monitoring. This has enhanced China's status and influence in the field of emissions reduction," Wang added.

CCS can capture up to 90 percent of the carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions produced from the use of fossil fuels in electricity generation and industrial processes, preventing emissions from entering the atmosphere.

"Coal plays a major role in China's energy structure, so the pressure on emissions reduction is pretty high," said Wang.

With the support of the Ministry of Science and Technology of China and the National Energy Administration of China, the demonstration project was launched in Ordos in 2010, and had completed carbon capture, purification, pressurization and drilling work by the end of that year, said the report.

CO2 produced by the coal liquefaction will be liquefied through purification, cooling and pressurizing after it is captured, and transported to the operation area by special tankers.

The liquid CO2 then will be injected into saline aquifers between 1,500 and 2,500 meters underground for storage through the injection and the monitoring wells, which are about 2,500 meters deep.

"However, iron and steel enterprises are still the main targets of rectification for China to reach its objective of emissions reduction, as the CCS is still a new technology," Zhang Xiaobo, a Beijing-based expert on the carbon trade, told the Global Times.

 

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Greening China's deserts -- the Kubuqi way
New China TV
Published on May 16, 2019

Spanning 18,600 square kilometers, Kubuqi desert sits on a curve of Yellow River in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region and once threatened to bury the region. Over the past 30 years, that expansion has been curtailed and reversed

 

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Greening China's deserts -- the Kubuqi way
New China TV
Published on May 16, 2019

Spanning 18,600 square kilometers, Kubuqi desert sits on a curve of Yellow River in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region and once threatened to bury the region. Over the past 30 years, that expansion has been curtailed and reversed

wow.wow..its thrilling...love it...

 

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14:47, 19-May-2019
China's water quality improvement uneven in first quarter of 2019
CGTN

Despite an overall improvement in its water quality in the first quarter, China saw water quality deteriorate in some major lakes, rivers and reservoirs, according to the Ministry of Ecology and Environment.

The ministry said the improvement was imbalanced across the country, and the plunge in water quality happened in some rivers in Shanxi, Liaoning, Hubei and Heilongjiang Provinces, which dropped from grade II during this period last year to "inferior to Grade V," the lowest level in China's water quality grading system.

China aims to basically eliminate water "inferior to Grade V" in the Yangtze River Delta and Bohai Bay area by 2020.

In the first quarter, six national monitoring sections in the Yangtze River Delta were out of the "inferior to Grade V" level, while six in Jingmen city, Hubei Province remained the lowest level, with one in Yichang City newly added into the level.

The delta faces prominent total phosphorus pollution, said the ministry. It lacks urban sewage treatment capacity, and supporting pipe network is incomplete, with some sewage discharged directly into rivers.

Conditions were severe as well in the Bohai Bay area, as four national monitoring sections remained the "inferior to Grade V" level, plus six newly-classified ones.

The Fuxian Lake in southwest China's Yunnan Province. /VCG Photo

Fuxian Lake in southwest China's Yunnan Province is the country's largest deep freshwater lake, accounting for 9.16 percent of the storage of all domestic freshwater lakes. However, phosphorus and nitrogen run-offs have lowered its water quality, with the level of total phosphorus beyond the acceptable limit in the first three months.

The ministry also called for strengthening forecasts and early warnings of water condition, as well as water quality monitoring of drinking water sources, and timely taking measures to dispose cyanobacteria in major lakes and reservoirs to secure water quality.

Water quality grades

According to the Environmental Quality Standard for Surface Water, China has classified its water into five grades, from I to V, according to the function.

The first level has the highest requirement for water quality and is mainly applicable to source water and national nature reserves.

The higher the grade, the worse the water quality is.

The water at Grade V is for agriculture and general landscape usage, and water "inferior to Grade V" is what people call "unusable."

(Cover via VCG)

 

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China's green efforts inspire world
New China TV
Published on May 19, 2019

China has been committing to green development. The ongoing Beijing horticultural expo is an example. Click for more about the country's green efforts.

 

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China coal hub uses microalgae for cutting emissions
Source: Xinhua| 2019-05-21 16:51:37|Editor: ZX

TAIYUAN, May 21 (Xinhua) -- Companies in China's coal-rich Shanxi Province are using microalgae as a low-cost solution for cutting carbon emissions, according to a local university.

Shanxi Agricultural University has developed a system based on microalgae, a kind of algae that is invisible to the naked eye, for handling pollutants such as carbon dioxide in waste gases.

Microalgae is 10 times more efficient in carbon fixation than normal plants. It can absorb over 65 percent of the carbon dioxide and more than 90 percent of the nitride and sulfide in smoke.

China plans to cut carbon emissions per unit of GDP by 60 to 65 percent from 2005 levels by 2030 and raise the share of non-fossil energy use in total consumption to about 20 percent.

 

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High-flying airships to probe atmosphere
By Zhang Zhihao | chinadaily.com.cn | Updated: 2019-05-23 14:34

A giant helium-filled airship called Jimu 1 docks at the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. [Photo by Aerospace Information Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences]

Chinese scientists launched a giant helium-filled airship called Jimu 1 on Thursday morning to collect weather data at a record altitude of more than 7,000 meters above the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau.

It is the first of three airships in the pipeline aimed at collecting key atmospheric data on the plateau and observing the effects of climate change to provide support for sustainable development on the plateau.

The planned Jimu 2 will fly even higher, followed by Jimu 3, a groundbreaking model that will exceed the height of Mount Qomolangma — more than 8,800 meters. It will house experimental and advanced equipment that can push the limits of science and engineering.

The Jimu 1 airship is launched on the morning of May 23, 2019. [Photo by Aerospace Information Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences]

While the Jimu 1 is a prototype whose main purpose is to test designs and applications, Jimu 2 will be the finished model designed to operate at the altitude around 7,000 to 7,500 meters and serve the second scientific expedition to the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, which began in 2017.

The Jimu 1, has a volume of 2,300 cubic meters and contains 1,400 kilograms of helium. Its surface is made of composite fabric that can withstand temperatures as low as -70 C, according to the Aerospace Information Research Institute of the Chinese Academy Sciences, the airship's creator. Most of the components were made in China.

The Qinghai-Tibet Plateau has been dubbed Earth's "third pole" and "the water tower of Asia". It is the source of many Asian rivers including the Yangtze, Yellow, Indus and Mekong.

 

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Environment-related patent applications in China up over past decade: newspaper
Source: Xinhua| 2019-05-23 11:16:38|Editor: Liangyu

BEIJING, May 23 (Xinhua) -- Environment-related patent applications in China have surged over the past decade, Thursday's China Daily reported.

The country ranked first globally in patent filings between 2008 and 2017, the newspaper cited a recent report as saying.

The annual average growth in patent filings from China stood at 34.15 percent in the physical pollution control sector and 31.74 percent in the segment of soil and underground water remediation, it said.

In other technological sectors of air pollution prevention, environmental monitoring, water pollution control, and solid waste treatment and disposal, the average annual growth in Chinese patent filings surpassed 24 percent.

The report was compiled by the China Association of Environmental Protection Industry and the Hefei Institute of Physical Science at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Despite the sheer size, China did not have a similar proportion of standard-essential patents in the field, according to the newspaper.

The country's essential patents in air pollution prevention and combat accounted for a meager 5.6 percent, although its total applications in the field made up more than one-third of the total.

"We shall protect intellectual property and increase the quality of patents to prevent the waste of research resources," Gui Huaqiao, a report compiler from the Hefei Institute of Physical Science, was quoted as saying.

 

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NEWS * 28 MAY 2019
Pollution cover-ups exposed in Chinese provinces | Nature
A government investigation reveals thousands of violations — some by local officials who helped companies to cover up illegal waste dumping.

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China is aiming to clean up polluted water.Credit: David Gray/Reuters

Local governments in China have been fabricating environmental reports, helping companies to conceal illegal dumping and deceiving central-government inspectors, according to a report by the country's central environment ministry.

The ministry says that last year it uncovered thousands of violations of environmental regulations across ten provinces. A summary of these findings and of attempts by local governments to redress their actions was released by the ministry on 16 May. The summary also says that all ten have provinces have since made progress in cleaning up environmental messes.

China has been trying to reduce its environmental damage and boost initiatives to preserve its biodiversity. But the findings show that the country has a way to go to clean up its polluted air, water and soil — a goal of President Xi Jinping.

In Anhui, one of the ten provinces investigated by the ministry, artificial-diamond manufacturers allegedly dumped waste water and hazardous solid waste. But before inspectors went to investigate, officials warned the manufacturers about the inspections, according to documents that the Anhui government released earlier this month. In some cases, officials even instructed the companies to forge waste-disposal contracts, flush out a ditch contaminated with waste water and temporarily suspend production to seem compliant with regulations, say the documents.

False claims
Also in Anhui, officials in the city of Wuhu claimed in August 2017 that complaints that a concrete company was illegally disposing of solid waste had been resolved. In fact, the company didn’t even start to address the problem until a year later — in the meantime, the officials helped the company to hide illegal waste from inspectors, according to Anhui government documents .

In other cases, local officials would routinely forge documents to cover up their negligence, according to the ministry. A local government in the city of Zunyi, in Guizhou province in the south of the country, fabricated notes — which are required under the country’s regulations — for ten meetings that never happened.

The ministry’s summary evaluated the ten provinces on how they have addressed such problems since the investigations. For instance, Shanxi province has fined polluters about 24 million yuan (US$3.5 million), and set out to resolve 1,463 violations of environmental regulations. The ministry called these "positive results".

Hunan province has ordered 4,326 companies to change their practices, and has handed out 80 million yuan in fines.

 

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Formation Mechanism of Highly Toxic Substances during Solid Waste Incineration Revealed
May 28, 2019

Recently, a group led by Prof. CHEN Jiping and Prof. ZHANG Haijun in the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics (DICP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences revealed the formation mechanism of highly toxic chlorinated aromatic compounds during solid waste incineration. Their findings were published in Environmental Science and Technology.

A large number of aromatic compounds can be formed and emitted during solid waste incineration, accompanied by the formation and volatilization of chloride, chlorine and chlorine radicals. These aromatic compounds can react with chlorine-containing species in a complex way to form chlorinated aromatic compounds, known for their carcinogenic, teratogenic and mutagenic effects.

Chlorination of aromatic hydrocarbons is a key step to control the formation of chlorinated aromatic compounds in incineration flue gas. However, the formation mechanism of highly toxic chlorinated aromatic compounds during solid waste incineration has not been comprehensively and intensively understood, which limits the development of emission reduction technology of chlorinated aromatic compounds.

Dechlorination-oxychlorination cycles of Cu and Fe species drive naphthalene chlorination. (Image by WANG Dan and ZHANG Haijun)

The researchers investigated the effects of a series of metal oxides and chlorides, such as copper, iron, manganese, aluminum, chromium, nickel, etc., on the electrophilic chlorination of aromatics by simulating the reaction atmosphere of incineration flue gas and using naphthalene as a model compound.

"We found that copper and iron chlorides were the key active substances to promote the chlorination of naphthalene, and we revealed the mechanism of electrophilic chlorination of aromatic compounds driven by dechlorination-oxychlorination cycles of copper and iron species," said Prof. CHEN.

Copper chloride and ferric chloride could act as chlorinating agents to directly induce chlorination of aromatic compounds. In the dechlorination-oxychlorination cycle of copper species, the direct chlorination induced by copper chloride was the main mechanism of chlorination of aromatic compounds, while the direct chlorination and catalytic chlorination played the same role on the chlorination of aromatic compounds driven by dechlorination-oxychlorination cycle of iron species.

Based on the in-depth understanding of the chlorination mechanism of chlorinated aromatic compounds during solid waste incineration, the researchers developed a technology to inhibit the formation of chlorinated aromatic compounds such as dioxins from incineration sources, which has been applied in three large-scale municipal solid waste incineration power plants.

The above work was supported by DICP Innovation Fund, the National Natural Science Foundation of China and the National Key Basic Research Development Plan (973).


Formation Mechanism of Highly Toxic Substances during Solid Waste Incineration Revealed---Chinese Academy of Sciences

 

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06-10-2019
Biomass and solar power can be turned into hydrogen and diesel fuels • Earth.com
By Chrissy Sexton
Earth.com staff writer

Scientists at the Chinese Academy of Sciences have developed a technique to convert the energy from biomass and light sources into diesel fuel and hydrogen. The work may introduce a way to generate clean energy using solar power and sustainable carbon sources present on the Earth’s surface.

Biomass is a renewable energy source that is widely available in wood, animal manure, and in agricultural crops and waste material. Biomass is a good candidate for replacing petrochemicals, such as petroleum and fossil fuels, to provide abundant derivative products. As an alternative to photocatalytic water splitting, the splitting of biomass usually yields higher rates of hydrogen production.

However, oxidative products derived from biomass are essentially useless, resulting in the loss of sustainable biomass resources and environmental pollution. Experts are working to develop technologies that merge hydrogen production and biomass conversion into value-added chemicals or fuels to bring about a “double guarantee” of materials and energy.

A team led by Professor WANG Feng has now created a method which uses light energy to enhance downstream biomass products so that hydrogen and diesel fuel can be produced simultaneously.

To test the new technique, the reactions were carried out at room temperature and pressure. The reactions successfully delivered hydrogen and diesel fuel precursors that are constituted by isomeric oxygenates with a variety of carbon numbers typical of diesel fuel.

By removing the oxygen contents from the diesel fuel precursors, the experts were able to produce sustainable diesel fuels with components similar to those currently found in petroleum diesel. According to the researchers, the hydrogen could be used to remove the oxygen from the diesel fuel precursors or could be used alone.

The study is published in the journal Nature Energy.

 

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A Global Database Established to Investigate Climate and Vegetation Drivers of Terrestrial Carbon Fluxes
Jun 14, 2019

A better understanding of terrestrial flux dynamics will come from elucidating the integrated effects of climate and vegetation constraints on gross primary productivity (GPP), ecosystem respiration (ER), and net ecosystem productivity (NEP), according to Dr. CHEN Shutao, Associate professor at Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology.

Dr. CHEN and his team have had their findings published in Advances in Atmospheric Sciences (AAS), a journal hosted by the Institute of Atmospheric Physics (IAP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

The cover art, reproduced from a global map of eddy covariance tower sites, shows carbon cycle processes and indicates the influence of temperature, precipitation and vegetation on terrestrial carbon assimilation and emissions. (Image by AAS)

"The terrestrial carbon cycle plays an important role in global climate change, but the vegetation and environmental drivers of carbon fluxes are poorly understood. Many more data on carbon cycling and vegetation characteristics in various biomes (e.g., forest, grassland, wetland) make it possible to investigate the vegetation drivers of terrestrial carbon fluxes," says CHEN.

A photo of rainforest with a positive net carbon assimilation rate in Xishuangbanna, China. (Image by CHEN Shutao)

"We established a global dataset with 1194 available data across site-years including GPP, ER, NEP, and relevant environmental factors to investigate the variability in GPP, ER and NEP, as well as their covariability with climate and vegetation drivers. The results indicated that both GPP and ER increased exponentially with the increase in MAT [mean annual temperature] for all biomes. Besides MAT, AP [annual precipitation] had a strong correlation with GPP (or ER) for non-wetland biomes. Maximum LAI [leaf area index] was an important factor determining carbon fluxes for all biomes. The variations in both GPP and ER were also associated with variations in vegetation characteristics," states CHEN.

"The model including MAT, AP and LAI explained 53% of the annual GPP variations and 48% of the annual ER variations across all biomes. The model based on MAT and LAI explained 91% of the annual GPP variations and 93% of the annual ER variations for the wetland sites. The effects of LAI on GPP, ER or NEP highlighted that canopy-level measurement is critical for accurately estimating ecosystem-atmosphere exchange of carbon dioxide."

"This synthesis study highlights that the responses of ecosystem-atmosphere exchange of CO2 to climate and vegetation variations are complex, which poses great challenges to models seeking to represent terrestrial ecosystem responses to climatic variation," he adds.

A group of researchers from the Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Agricultural Meteorology/School of Applied Meteorology of Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, College of Resources and Environmental Sciences of Nanjing Agricultural University and Climate Center of Anhui Weather Bureau, China are involved in the study.


A Global Database Established to Investigate Climate and Vegetation Drivers of Terrestrial Carbon Fluxes---Chinese Academy of Sciences

 

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Innovations drive wetland restoration
By Xie Chuanjiao in Qingdao | chinadaily.com.cn | Updated: 2019-06-18 15:34

Before-and-after photos show how new cultivated reeds help restore wetlands. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

A Chinese institute recently announced much progress has been made in protecting and restoring coastal wetlands in China, thanks to a series of innovative efforts.

Qingdao Institute of Marine Geology, affiliated with the China Geological Survey of China's Ministry of Natural Resources, said it has built a monitoring system in Liaohe River Delta in Northeast China, which covers a multi-layered ecosystem combing water, sediment, atmosphere and living creatures.

The institute also independently developed unique technical equipment for greenhouse gas measurement and soil carbon sequestration, acquiring 16 domestic and foreign patents.

The Qingdao Institute of Marine Geology established an observational network on a coastal wetland to study temperature change. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

The institute also cultivated four varieties of reeds out of 91 genomic species worldwide to help restore wetlands. The cultivated varieties adapt to climate and geological conditions in North China with saline-alkali tolerant and disease resistance features.

Wetlands are often transitional zones between terrestrial and deep-water aquatic systems, and many processes have major implications for species.

A strech of wetland with reeds. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

Researchers doing investigative work in a coastal wetland in northeastern China. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

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