Chongqing- As a modern large-scale fertilizer manufacturer, Sinochem Fuling Chongqing Chemical Industry Co., Ltd. (Sinochem Fuling) embarked on a new path of green development aimed at the ecological transformation of Southwest China's Chongqing Municipality. 

By restoring green ecology and building green factories, Sinochem Fuling invested more than 3 billion yuan (about 462 million U.S. dollars) in implementing the overall environmental protection relocation in 2019. 

Not only did it restore the coastline ecology and build Shilongshan Park, but it also created Sinochem Fuling based on its advantageous industries to create a national leading high-end phosphate and compound fertilizer industry base in Baitao New Material Science and Technology City in Fuling District, east of Chongqing.

Green protection 

Located beside the Yangtze River, Sinochem Fuling is a national key phosphate and compound fertilizer backbone enterprise with an annual production of 1.5 million tons of chemical fertilizers, ranking among the top ten domestic phosphate fertilizer manufacturers in terms of production scale.

Despite the fundamental contributions to local economic development, the company is plagued by severe environmental problems, from dust collection facilities to incomplete sewage collection. October 31, 2019, was the most important day for Sinochem Fuling to implement the environmental protection relocation with all chemical plants shutting down.

“The dismantling of the production equipment is relatively simple, but the disposal of the phosphogypsum storage yard is difficult,” said Qu Daishu, deputy general manager of the company. 

There is no successful precedent for the stable discharge and treatment of leachate from large-scale phosphogypsum reservoirs in the industry. To this end, the company decided to invest heavily to build a sewage treatment station with the experts' support, which can dispose of 3,600 tons of phosphogypsum yard leachate per day, successfully achieving the stable and standard discharge of this type of wastewater for the first time in the country.

Storage yard to park

Since July last year, Fuling District has conducted ecological regreening after closing the phosphogypsum storage yard and planted about 230,000 square meters of flowers and plants. In the later stage, a connecting park road about 1.2 kilometers will be built here with 1,500 seedlings planted and 100,000 square meters of ecological greening.

"It is not only the ecological restoration of green phosphogypsum storage yard but also the coastline of the ecological restoration plant," said an official of the Fuling District. After the relocation of Sinochem Fuling, there are 8-kilometer coastlines be ecologically restored, including ecological riverbank reconstruction, replanting of coastal ecological conservation forest, landslide treatment and river tunnel, and construction of different facilities and projects.

"In the future, the old factory here will become a new scenic spot for citizens' leisure and entertainment," he added. 

 

Green factory parks 

Old factories' ecological restoration and new green factories building can be achieved at the same time. 

In Baitao New Material Science and Technology City, Sinochem Fuling's new factory is under construction. The total investment in the new factory is 3.292 billion yuan, covering an area of more than 600,000 square meters.

Qu said that the construction of the new factory adopts the advanced technology and equipment of the integrated industry, meeting the standards of the national cleaner production evaluation system. Nearly 200 million yuan of the new factory is applied in the introduction of environmental protection devices, which are dedicated to the treatment of wastewater, gas, and residue. Through recycling, it can prevent wastewater from being discharged outside the plant.

“This is an opportunity for the transformation and upgrading of the enterprise,” said the person in charge of the company. The new factory utilizes the world’s advanced technology to build high-end fine phosphate products and new ecological special fertilizer devices encouraged by the state, forming a major plant with an annual output of 900,000 tons and a production capacity of 1.4 million tons of intermediate products.

This year, Sinochem Fuling’s new factory will be completed and put into operation in June. The average annual total industrial output value will reach 3.5 billion yuan, and the total profit and tax will exceed 300 million yuan, providing 1,500 jobs.

(Wang Lu, as an intern, also contributed to this report.)