Jiangsu Sinorgchem Technology Co., Ltd.：Circular economy to realize the win-win cooperation

Company profile

 
Jiangsu Sinorgchem Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Jiangsu Sinorgchem) is a global leading rubber chemical supplier, and its products include antioxidant PPD, intermediate RT Base (4-ADPA), insoluble sulfur, and high-content TMQ among others. The company, affiliated to Sinochem International Corporation (Sinochem International), focuses on the R&D, production and marketing services for rubber chemicals.
 
The operation center of Jiangsu Sinorgchem is located in Shanghai. It has production, R&D and other branches across several provinces in China and set up wholly-owned sales subsidiaries in Europe and the US. Jiangsu Sinorgchem has established a long-term partnership with the world's leading tire manufacturers, with its businesses covering more than 50 countries and regions in the world and its staff totaling more than 1,500 both at home and abroad.
 
Challenges
 
The rapid development of global economy increases the energy demand. In China, the energy structure that is given priority to with coal is with large energy consumption, but low energy efficiency. The large "three wastes" emissions and the high cost of environmental governance force China to pursue the sustainable development mode. Tongling, Anhui province, as a typical resource-based city, faces the dilemma that the  recoverable resources dries up and environmental pollution problems are more serious, so sustainable development is particularly important. Tongling municipal government actively advocates and encourages enterprises to implement circular economy, achieve mutual benefit and promote the local environmental protection.
 
Though Jiangsu Sinorgchem has made great achievements in cleaner production after years of efforts, it still faces pressure of developing cleaner production technique and popularizing an effective three wastes governance model. The Tongling branch of Jiangsu Sinorgchem , that is, Anhui Sinorgchem, uses coal fired boilers in the production process, which is low in combustion efficiency and high in coal consumption and operation cost. Fees used for the environmental protection process of coal residue, waste gas and water produced are expensive. Therefore, Anhui Sinorgchem needs clean energy badly so as to reduce economic cost and environmental protection cost, to respond to Tongling municipal government’s appeal of developing circular economy and to promote the green development of Tongling city.
 
Solutions
 
Targeted seeking the clean energy by Anhui Sinorgchem, Jiangsu Sinorgchem uses the concept of circular economy and initiates cooperation between enterprises to use surplus coke oven gas and steam resources from surrounding enterprises. This not only solves the problem, realize the win-win cooperation, but also contributes to the green development of Tongling.
 
Carry out investigation to find new idea of circular economy
 
Anhui Sinorgchem carries out investigation and finds that coking plants nearby produce far more coke oven gas than used in the production process, which is usually emitted after combustion, causing a great waste of thermal energy. Then, is it possible to use the extra coke oven gas as clean fuel? The company considers to corporate with coking plants to divert extra coke oven gas to its plant and to use it as fuel, which can not only satisfy its need for clean fuel, but also helps coking plants earn economic profits through selling coke oven gas. It really a win-win situation.
 
Initiate cooperation to recycling of coke oven gas
 
Anhui Sinorgchem communicates with coking plants actively and they soon reach an agreement on corporation. The company plunges into actions, arranging staff to lay special coke oven gas pipelines, contacting with the producer of the boilers to make adjustments to the furnace of the coal fired boiler, adding burners, and using coke oven gas to do burning tests. After more than one-year testing, they achieve good results. However, this is only gas fired boiler transformed on the basis of coal fired boiler. It certainly cannot reach the combustion efficiency of gas fired boiler. Therefore, Anhui Sinorgchem purchases and equips 3 gas fired boilers for special use to replace the previous 5 coal fired boilers, which improves the combustion efficiency further.
 
Deep recycle to extract production materials
 
Anhui Sinorgchem further analyzes the ingredients of coke oven gas and finds that there is plenty of hydrogen, an essential raw material for the production of the company. The company usually gets hydrogen from the fission of methyl. Since the price of coke oven gas is lower than that of methyl, and there has already been mature pressure swing absorption technique to obtain hydrogen from coal gas, it is feasible both in economy and technique to replace the old way of producing hydrogen with the way of separating hydrogen from coke oven gas. Then, the company increases investment and builds a set of pressure swing absorption equipment to make hydrogen from methyl as raw material for production. It stops the use of previous old equipment and inflammable and explosive dangerous chemical, methyl. After hydrogen is separated from coke oven gas, what being left is carbon monoxide and desorbed gas of methyl, whose combustion value is even higher than that of coke oven gas and can be sent back to the boiler to be used as fuel.
 
Achievement
 
Anhui Sinorgchem makes uses of extra steam and coke oven gas produced by coking plants nearby, weeds out the previous 5 coal fired boilers and 2 sets of equipment for hydrogen production through the fission of methyl and purchases 3 gas fired boilers and 1 set of equipment to produce hydrogen from coal gas, thus realizing a win-win corporation with cokeing plants, promoting the enterprises’ sustainable development and setting a good example of develop circular economy for Tongling.
 
Social benefit
 
Anhui Sinorgchem’s multi-use of coke oven gas project replaces coal with coke oven gas, which maximizes the use of energy, decreases usage amount of various energy, and reduces both the emission of three wastes and sulfur dioxide, soot and nitrogen oxide in the boiler smoke, thus being friendly to environmental protection. The use of hydrogen extracted from coke oven gas as raw material puts an end to the use of dangerous chemical, methyl, greatly lowering environmental risk. This project is highly valued by Tongling’s government department in charge of energy conservation and is recommended as a good case of national energy saving and emission reduction model city and circular economy model city to be popularized. The company not only makes great contribution to the sound development of Tongling’s ecological environment, but also setting a good example for our nation’s chemical enterprises in energy saving and emission reduction construction. In 2014, Anhui Sinorgchem received a national energy saving special fund of RMB 2 million for its multi-use of coke oven gas.
 
Economic benefit
 
Before the project implementation, it needs to add coal and clean coal cinder by the workers, and every on-site personnel needs 14 workers, but now boiler operation realized the automatic operation with only 2 workers, and others can be arranged to other production posts, which saves the manpower cost for the enterprise. At the same time, the recycling of coke oven gas and the extraction of hydrogen, reduces the coal consumption, reduces the costs of raw materials and environmental investment on the processing of "three wastes". It is estimated that, after the boiler is modified, the company production saves more than 8 million yuan of production cost.
 
Prospect
 
Now, Jiangsu Sinorgchem has applied the circular economy pattern in all factories.For the future, Jiangsu Sinorgchem will design the roadmap of circular economy, will continue to explore the way of circular economy development, and strengthen cooperation between enterprises. More energy conservation and emissions reduction projects will be implemented to improve resource utilization and reduce environmental impact. At the same time, Jiangsu Sinorgchem will systematically summarize the outstanding experience, and actively share it with industry partners to help them to promote the sustainable development ability.