Business

Advanced technology changes coal residue and waste materials into more valuable products

By Xu Xiao (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-11-18 07:50

The Tashan coal mine is being announced as the first recycling economic park in the Chinese coal mining industry.

The park consists of two coal mines, a coal preparation plant, two power stations, a methanol plant, a kaolinite processing plant, a cement plant, a brickyard, a sewage treatment plant, and a railway.

All the parks facilities are part of an integrated network where the waste of factory A becomes the materials of factory B.

For example, the raw coal brought up out of the Tashan mine are conveyed to the preparation plant to be washed, then the refined coal is separated for transport to market.

The "middlings", or inferior coal particles, which used to be sold at a low price or just discarded, here, are delivered to the power plant and the methanol plant as raw material. The fuel ash that the power plant generates can be used to produce cement.

The residue from the wash plant - the "gangue", or rubbish - which used to have no value, is now taken to the kaolinite processing plant. It is turned into kaolin, a material that is used in the manufacture of paper, coatings, and ceramic, and any refuse goes to the brickyard to be made into bricks.

The whole recycling process changes the waste into something valuable and significantly increases Tashan Park's output, compared with traditional coalmines.

The park's output was worth 8.7 billion yuan in 2009. This year, the figure is expected to double to 17 billion yuan.

High-ranked leaders of the Party and central government including Hu Jintao, Wen Jiabao, Jia Qinglin and Li Keqiang all visited Tashan and spoke highly of its achievement.

"As the world's largest coal producer, China should have the most advanced mining technology, equipment and talent," Premier Wen Jiabao remarked during his trip to Tashan.

"This is our responsibility and what we should contribute to human beings," Wen said.

If you stand and look at Tashan Park, you can hardly imagine Tongmei in the old days, when its coal exploitation was really intensive and the surrounding countryside was heavily polluted.

Now, however, the Tashan mode presents a new way of doing things for the entire industry, not to mention all of China's resource-based companies, Chinese Academy of Engineering and China National Coal Association experts have said.

The Datong group is itself one of the biggest beneficiaries. The Tashan experience has allowed Tongmei to shift its focus from coal mining alone and expand into non-coal businesses like power generation, chemical engineering, metallurgy and machinery manufacturing.

The area around the mines has changed dramatically. There is no solid waste from production: it is all reused to make new products. And all the wastewater is purified at the sewage treatment plant and can be used again.

Neighboring villages have also benefited from the new, green way of doing things, thanks to an improved environment and regional economy.

In future, Tongmei plans to apply the "Tashan mode" to more mines, including seven, each of which has an annual capacity of 10 million tons of coal and four others, each with 5-million-ton capacity.