Authorities in one of China's most polluted cities – Shijiazhuang, Hebei province – have come up with scheme to utilise heat from industrial waste water to warm a 100,000 square metre area of the city, reducing the need for polluting coal burners.
The program in Lijingwan uses effluent from a refinery to warm clean water before the water is heated again by efficient electric boilers in basements. The combination of hot waste water and efficient boilers can cut energy consumption by 44 percent, the local heating office said.
For the Lijingwan neighborhood alone, that means 868 tons of coal could be saved in a single winter.
"We used coal boilers before, but they weren’t hot enough, so we had to buy electric radiators," said Xie Yanru, a Lijingwan resident. "Now the new system keeps the rooms warm and at a stable temperature, and we don’t need to pay extra fees."
Shijiazhuang officials estimate that industrial waste water could be used to help heat up to 50 million square metres within five years. "It turns the waste into a gold mine," vice mayor Zhang Ye told Xinhua, "and reduces emissions."
An estimated 275,000 tons of coal can be saved per 10 million square metres of floor per year, if coal boilers are replaced with the water-based heaters, according to Gree Electric Appliances, which provided the equipment for the scheme.
A recent blueprint published at the Third Plenum, a series of Party meetings which concluded this month, called for an increase in resource taxes, particularly on coal, to encourage the use of cleaner energy sources. Beijing also announced plans to limit the number of license plates issued for cars in the city next year to 150,000, down from 240,000 in 2013. More out there solutions to the capital's smog problem include a vast electromagnetic vacuum cleaner that would suck up harmful particles from Beijing's air.
[Image via Wikipedia]
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