Standing on the bank of the Jialu River in Zhengzhou City, one can see lush trees on both sides of the river, and fish and shrimp playing and foraging in the river. How clear is the question channel? To have a source of fresh water. Every day, 300000 tons of high standard recycled water discharged from the Matougang Sewage Treatment Plant in Zhengzhou City are discharged into the Jialu River. This helps to improve the self purification capacity of rivers and form a virtuous cycle of water resources.
In 2022, China discharged 80 billion tons of sewage and wastewater, of which only 23% were recycled. Developing efficient pollutant removal and wastewater resource reuse technologies has become an urgent need for green development. Tsinghua University, Zhengzhou Sewage Purification Co., Ltd. and other units have jointly developed key technologies for sewage/wastewater purification and resource recovery based on new carbon based materials, providing an ideal solution for low-cost purification and efficient reuse of sewage. Compared with conventional activated carbon adsorption technology for pollutant treatment, the cost of this technology is reduced by more than 60%. As a new type of carbon based material, the recovery rate of activated coke adsorption performance exceeds 90%.
By utilizing efficient pollutant removal and wastewater resource reuse technologies, Matougang Sewage Treatment Plant has become the first water plant in Henan Province to meet the Class III standard for surface water in rivers. The 600000 tons of recycled water produced here every day, in addition to replenishing the Jialu River, also flow to the urban recycled water pipeline, which is used for river landscape water, green irrigation, road flushing, etc., greatly alleviating the water shortage situation in the city.
At present, this technological achievement has been applied in 45 water treatment projects nationwide, with a total of over 750 million tons of wastewater treated and 450 million tons of high-quality recycled water obtained.
Traditional sewage treatment has problems such as long process flow, high energy consumption, and large land occupation. In order to meet the requirements of green, low-carbon, and high-quality development, sewage treatment plants in the new era are breaking away from the previous extensive form and transforming towards "technology intensive, land intensive, and cost intensive".
The Xin'an River Sewage Treatment Plant in Yantai City, Shandong Province is such a sewage treatment plant. By applying intensive, efficient, and low-carbon wastewater treatment fluidized biofilm technology and equipment, as well as corresponding control cloud platforms, the factory area has been reduced by 70%, unit treatment energy consumption has been reduced by 50%, and 100% unmanned operation has been achieved.
At present, the domestic market share of related technologies and equipment is nearly 60%, and they have been applied in fields such as municipal sewage treatment, high ammonia nitrogen industrial water treatment, and low concentration river water treatment. 22 related projects have been constructed in Shandong, Guangdong, Jiangsu and other regions, with a total processing capacity of 2.672 million tons per day, achieving carbon reduction of 1202 tons per day, and saving nearly 200 million yuan in annual operating costs.
Guo Chengzhan, President of the China Environmental Protection Industry Association, stated that the ecological and environmental protection industry will focus on original innovation and integrated innovation, promote cutting-edge leading technologies and common key technologies in the battle against pollution prevention and green and low-carbon transformation and development, and encourage enterprises and researchers in the ecological and environmental protection industry to explore disruptive technologies in the field of ecological and environmental protection. (Reporter Li He)
