NCIP: An Environment-Friendly Chemical Industry Park      

Nanjing Chemical Industry Park (NCIP) was established in October 2001. The planned area of the park is 45 km2 and the development focus includes oil/gas chemicals, basic organic chemical raw materials, fine chemicals, polymeric materials, life pharmaceuticals and new chemical materials.
   In the six years since its founding, the total capitalization of NCIP has grown constantly and all construction projects are being undertaken smoothly. NCIP has become a growth point in the development of the petrochemical industry in Nanjing. By the first half of 2007, NCIP developed a land area of 11.4 km2 and accomplished a fixed-asset investment of RMB20.0 billion. A group of well-known international chemical enterprises including BASF of Germany, BP of Britain, Celanese of the United States, Ciba Specialty Chemicals of Switzerland, DSM of Netherlands, Mitsubishi Gas Chemical and Itochu of Japan and Kumho Petrochemical of Korea have set up plants in the park.
   The petrochemical industry is a pillar sector in Nanjing. The founding of NCIP facilitates the centralized management of various chemical enterprises and helps change their previous scattered distribution. It is therefore in line with the mainstream trend in the development of the petrochemical industry in China. NCIP has made active explorations and achieved satisfactory results in strengthening environmental protection and ecological construction, developing cyclic economy and constructing an environment-friendly park.

1.  Accelerate the construction of various environmental protection facilities

According to the requirements defined in the reply of the National Development and Reform Commission to the overall development program of the park, NCIP formulated the "
Report on the Environment Impact Evaluation and Environment Protection of Nanjing Chemical Industry Park" in 2003. The report was approved by the State Environmental Protection Administration in December 2006.
   By the first half of 2007, NCIP had invested over RMB800 million in environmental protection, accounting for more than 10% of the total investment in infrastructure. In the construction of environmental protection facilities, NCIP has taken the world's most advanced concepts for reference and made concentrated efforts to construct a 30 000 t/d sewage treatment plant, a 100MW co-generation plant and a hazardous solid refuse disposal center. The centralized heat supply, water supply and steam supply and the centralized 30 000 t/d sewage treatment and solid refuses are complete. The capacity of the sewage treatment plant will be expanded to 100 000 t/d in the second phase according to the needs of users.
   After the centralized heat supply is achieved in the co-generation plant, NCIP will exercise strict control on the heat supply in enterprises and prohibit enterprises building small boilers for themselves to reduce the impact of waste gas discharge to the atmospheric environment in the region.
   NCIP has had a constant increase in the investment in greening and completed a green area of 1.0 million m2. When the greening area of individual enterprises is added, green coverage in the developed area has already reached more than 25%.

2.  Promote the optimization of the industrial structure

In introducing projects into the park, NCIP has strictly implemented the project environment impact evaluation system to prevent the introduction of projects with high toxicity, high pollution or high energy consumption. The principle of giving priority to environment-friendly projects and related demonstration projects has been upheld. Environmental protection projects of wastes treatment, resource recycling and environmental protection technologies have been actively developed. Focus has been laid on green chemical projects of fine chemicals, new chemical materials and biosynthesis chemicals with high technical content, high added value and low pollution in the park. Besides, a group of chemical projects with large scale, close upstream/downstream linkage and strong economy promoting capability have been introduced into the park. For example, the integrated chemical industry base funded by Celanese of the United States started business in the NCIP in September 2007. The chemical industry base mainly produces acetic acid, vinyl acetate, acetic anhydride and vinyl acetate/ethylene copolymer emulsion. The 600 000 t/a acetic acid unit started production in June 2007. (CCR2007, No. 27) The acetic acid project completed by Celanese has pushed a group of foreign companies such as BP to invest in the acetic acid sector in the park and help build the park into the biggest acetic acid production base in China.

3.  Take the cyclic economy as the core

According to the requirements of the "3Rs" (reduce, reuse and recycle) principle, NCIP has actively developed the cyclic economy and increased the utilization rate of resources. Based on the comparative advantages of industrial development, the construction of industrial ecological chains such as ethylene, acetic acid and chlor-alkali has been accelerated to construct linked enterprises nearby and coordinate development of upstream and upstream operations. Mutual supply of raw materials between enterprises has been promoted through pipeline transmission networks connecting upstream, mid-stream and downstream enterprises to form a loop of "resources-products-renewed resources."
    The discharge of major pollutants COD (chemical oxygen demand) and SO2 in the park accounted for 0.027% and 0.17% respectively of the total in the city in 2006. Major indexes such as SO2, NOx, non-methane total hydrocarbons, benzene-series substances, H2S and ammonia in the atmosphere reached the national Class II standards. Among the 24 enterprises that have already started production, nine have passed the ISO14000 environmental management system certification and six have passed the clean production assessment.

4.  Intensify environmental protection supervision

While strengthening the construction of environmental protection facilities, NCIP has constantly intensified environmental protection supervision. In 2007 NCIP Management Committee has set up a safe production supervision division to take charge of the work on environmental protection, safety and employees' health in the park. In addition, a production dispatching center and an emergency response center have also been established to coordinate the work of handling emergencies that happen in production and build up the capacity to deal with hazards.
    All enterprises in the park have launched work on environmental impact evaluation according to the provisions defined in the "Law on Environmental Impact Evaluation" issued by the state. The 42 construction projects in the park today strictly observe the requirements on the "simultaneous design, simultaneous construction and simultaneous completion" of environmental protection facilities along with production facilities. Also, the treatment of pollutants by enterprises, both in the park and outside the park has also been defined according to different features of projects.
   After the explosion at Bi-Benzene Factory under PetroChina Jilin Petrochemical Company Ltd. in November 2005,(CCR 2005, No.33) NCIP made a serious study of lessons from the accident and strengthened the construction of environmental supervision systems, the management of hazardous chemicals, the response to emergencies and the construction of protection systems. Major enterprises in the park have installed on-line supervision devices to monitor COD and TO