Waste Management in China - Development and Challenges

Currently about 1.35 billion people live in the People´s Republic of China, which corresponds to about 20 % of the world population. The waste management is under construction, thereby the development is very dynamic like in most other economic sectors. For example the waste incineration has to be mentioned, which has been massively expanded in the recent years. In 2009, 47 waste incineration plants were in operation, which burned the municipal waste and until the end of 2011 there were already about 120 waste incineration plants. This capacity increase is equivalent to the entire current incineration capacity of Germany. But the majority of the accruing waste in China is still landfilled.

Against this background, the University of Rostock is committed since ten years in China and operates with the University of Hefei the Chinese-German Centre for Environmental Technology and Knowledge Transfer (CETK). In summer 2007 the CETK was selected by the government as Anhui competence centre in the field of waste management/waste technology. Since then the CETK accompanies the development of the waste management in Anhui (approx. 65 million inhabitants) and leads pilot projects in other Chinese provinces.
In the current 5-year plan (until 2015) the waste management measures take a special place. Because of the diverse environmental problems, which are caused by the landfills and the operational problems at the waste incineration plants, it is particular about to implement functioning overall systems for waste management. For this purpose a variety of activities and pilot projects (e.g. separate collection and recycling of biowaste, integration of MBT systems including production of solid recovered fuels for coal-fired power plants or the cement industry) are currently running in China. For example, 1,009 municipalities were selected, in which the introduction of the separate collection of biowaste was started in the end of 2011. Within this context, the construction of 50 biogas plants for the biowaste from private households and restaurants is planned. In the next section the MBT activities in China will be discussed.
The municipal waste in China consists of more than 60 % of organic (leftovers, leaves, grass, wood and animal components), as well as of packaging material and between 10 - 20 % of ash and mineral fine material. The water content in the waste varies depending on the origin, waste type and time of year, but the average amounts between 40 - 50 %. The significant part of waste paper, scrap metal, waste glass and plastic is already covered and sold by private collectors. Thus, the part of high-caloric and recyclable materials in the waste is already very low.
In consideration of these specific conditions a whole range of practical applications for in Germany established MBT technologies result, which have to be adapted and developed. In particular the following areas have to be mentioned, which are discussed in the article:
- pre-treatment before disposal to minimize the environmental pollution, especially the methane emissions from landfills,
- pre-treatment before the waste incineration plant to raise the heating value and therefore to ensure an independent incineration and
- generation of solid recovered fuels (SRF) for industrial furnaces such as coal-fired power plants, cement industry and SRF power plants.



Copyright: © Lehrstuhl für Abfallverwertungstechnik und Abfallwirtschaft der Montanuniversität Leoben
Quelle: Depotech 2012 (November 2012)
Seiten: 4
Preis: € 2,00
Autor: Prof. Dr. Michael Nelles
Dipl.-W.-Ing. Thomas Dorn
Prof Ke Wu
 
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