Review on the development of dioxin pollution prevention and control industry in 2024 and its development prospect in 2025
Industry Review in 2024
1. Main Policies and Standards
1.1 Main Policies
In order to thoroughly implement the decision-making arrangements of the CPC Central Committee and the State Council, implement the requirements of the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants and the performance targets in the new development stage, continuously promote the effective implementation of the National Implementation Plan of the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants, strengthen the national action to prevent and control environmental pollution of POPs, including dioxins, and effectively protect the ecological environment safety and people's health, in 2024, the state and local governments promulgated a series of policies, regulations and standards, which provided a basis for further promoting the prevention and control of dioxin pollution in China.
In January 2024, 14 ministries and commissions, including the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the National Development and Reform Commission, jointly issued the National Implementation Plan of the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (2024 Supplementary Edition) (Huan Solid [2024] No.7), which proposed the production, use and emission limits of POPs other than dioxins, and carried out the evaluation and report preparation of the implementation effectiveness including dioxins. At the same time, it is proposed to develop the detection methods of POPs, basic research on convention implementation, research and development and application of substitutes and alternative technologies, and pollution control technologies.
In February 2024, the General Office of the State Council issued the Opinions on Accelerating the Construction of Waste Recycling System (Guo Ban Fa [2024] No.7), proposing to accelerate the construction of waste recycling system and promote the comprehensive green transformation of development mode. This opinion emphasizes the importance of waste recycling and provides policy support and guidance for waste incineration power generation industry in waste recycling.
In February, 2024, National Health Commission and the State Administration of Markets jointly issued "Determination of Toxic Equivalent of Dioxins and Their Analogs in Food" (GB 5009.205-2024). Compared with the existing standards, on the basis of dioxin gas chromatography-magnetic high-resolution mass spectrometry (GC-HRMS), a new gas chromatography-triple quadrupole mass spectrometry (GC-MS/MS) was added, which was the first in China.
In May 2024, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment took the lead in compiling and publishing the Control of Persistent Organic Pollutants in China (2004-2024), which comprehensively introduced the control concept, practice and effect of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) including dioxins in China. Specifically, measures such as improving the POPs control system, promoting green substitution at the source, strengthening coordinated emission reduction in the process, and deepening waste management and disposal should be taken to vigorously promote POPs control actions and effectively reduce POPs environmental emissions. Among them, the emission intensity of dioxin in flue gas of domestic waste incineration industry decreased by about 97%, which led to the reduction of dioxin emission in the atmosphere; The emission intensity of dioxin in flue gas of iron ore sintering process in iron and steel industry decreased by about 70%, and the total emission of dioxin in the atmosphere decreased by about 20%, and the dioxin emission reduction effect was remarkable.
In September, 2024, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment issued the Standard System Table of Eco-environmental Monitoring of New Pollutants (2024 Edition) (No.310 [2024] of the Environmental Monitoring Office), aiming at providing reference for the investigation, monitoring, supervision and management of new pollutants. Among them, the standard samples of dioxins in fly ash are put forward in the system table.
In September 2024, the Department of Ecology and Environment of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region took the lead in issuing the National Implementation Plan for Implementing the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants in Guangxi (2024 Supplementary Edition) (Guihuan Standard [2024] No.7), and put forward the main tasks and division of labor for POPs control in combination with the actual development of Guangxi.
In November, 2024, the Hubei Provincial Department of Ecology and Environment took the lead in issuing the Notice on the Implementation Plan for Hubei Province to Implement the National Implementation Plan of the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (2024 Supplementary Edition) (No.17 [2024] of Hubei Province), and combined with the actual development of Hubei Province, put forward the main tasks and division of labor for POPs control.
In December 2024, Zhejiang Provincial Department of Ecology and Environment took the lead in issuing the Implementation Plan for Ultra-low Emission Reconstruction of Domestic Waste Incineration Plants in Zhejiang Province (Zhejiang Huanfa [2024] No.61), which proposed to promote the ultra-low emission reconstruction of existing domestic waste incineration plants in the province in two stages, and also proposed the maximum emission limits for pollutants such as nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide and ammonia in organized exhaust gas.
1.2 Main Criteria
In July, 2024, Zhongguancun Material Testing Technology Alliance issued the group standard "Technical Specification for Pollution Control of Dioxins in Fly Ash by Catalytic Decomposition at Low Temperature" (T/CSTM 00899-2024). The group standard is suitable for pollution control in the detoxification process of dioxins in fly ash from domestic waste incineration by low temperature catalytic decomposition technology.
In August, 2024, China National Environmental Monitoring Center took the lead in compiling the Technical Requirements and Detection Methods of Automatic Sampling System for Dioxin in Exhaust Gas from Stationary Pollution Sources (Draft for Comment), which is applicable to the design, production and detection of automatic sampling system for dioxin in exhaust gas from stationary pollution sources.
2. Industry Development
The year 2024 marks the 20th anniversary of China's implementation of the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants, and it is also an important year for China to fully implement the spirit of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China and the Third Plenary Session of the 20th Central Committee to accelerate the overall green transformation of economic and social development, develop green and low-carbon industries and promote the construction of a green and low-carbon circular development economic system. Under the background of domestic green development, pollution prevention and control has been pushed forward in depth, and the quality of ecological environment has been continuously improved. The field of dioxin pollution prevention and control in China has ushered in new opportunities, but it is also full of challenges, mainly in the following aspects:
(1) Insufficient research and development of online monitoring, forecasting and early warning technology. On the one hand, for the on-line monitoring technology of dioxins, due to the high temperature, high humidity and high dust environment in the solid waste incineration process and the complex sample matrix, the comprehensive performance of on-line monitoring equipment in harsh environmental conditions, such as precision, stability and anti-interference, has not been broken, and the on-site sampling and laboratory detection and analysis are still the main methods. At the same time, there is no policy or technical specification at the national level to guide the dioxin pollution prevention and control industry to carry out innovative research and development and pilot application of automatic online monitoring technology. In addition, dioxins are ultra-trace and various pollutants, so online monitoring technology must break through the technical bottleneck of high sensitivity and low detection limit to promote the complementarity between this technology and existing mature technologies. On the other hand, it is difficult for dioxin prediction and early warning technology to fully cover all variables such as emission source data, combustion state parameters and equipment operation parameters, which leads to great limitations in accurate modeling. At the same time, the prediction and early warning of dioxins can be realized by advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning, but due to the lack of a large number of training data and mature algorithms, its research and development and application scale are small. In addition, the prediction and early warning technology of dioxins has limited the reliability and accuracy of model prediction because of the insufficient time and space coverage of parameter information in the whole incineration process (source-process-end).
(2) Intelligent optimal control of solid waste incineration needs to be improved. Incineration is an effective way to realize solid waste disposal, and it is also one of the sources of dioxins. Under the requirements of the national "double carbon" goal, intelligent optimal control of solid waste incineration is an important measure to realize low-level stable discharge of pollutants such as dioxins and efficient utilization of waste heat. At present, although the intelligent optimization control technology of solid waste incineration has made some breakthroughs, it needs to be further improved, which is manifested in the following aspects: first, solid waste incineration is a complex physical and chemical reaction process, and the migration and transformation law of multi-form and multi-component pollutants is unknown, so it is difficult to establish an accurate incineration process characterization model and accurately describe the dynamic characteristics of the process; Second, solid waste incineration is a continuous process in which gas, liquid and solid coexist. The composition, moisture content and calorific value of solid waste fluctuate frequently in time and space, and the stable operation state of the system cannot be accurately controlled, resulting in serious interference of pollutants such as dioxins by unknown factors; Third, solid waste incineration is a coupling relationship between different process links, and it is difficult to coordinate the optimal control of all links and equipment from the overall situation according to real-time operating conditions, resulting in the inability to optimize the operation of the whole process and affecting the stable discharge of pollutants such as dioxins.
(3) The behavior of dioxin monitoring service needs to be standardized. The "Tenth Five-Year Plan" for Ecological Environment Monitoring puts forward that the monitoring data should be "true, accurate, complete, fast and new" with higher standards, so as to comprehensively promote the leap of ecological environment monitoring from quantitative scale to quality and efficiency, and improve the modernization level of ecological environment monitoring. At present, some organizations with dioxin monitoring capabilities have insufficient ideological understanding, lax compliance with laws and regulations, uneven team quality, irregular monitoring behavior, false and false data issuance and other behaviors in dioxin monitoring services, which leads to the decline of data quality and hidden dangers. In addition, driven by market interests, some service organizations have kept the monitoring costs down indefinitely in order to reduce the monitoring costs and obtain the maximum benefits, disrupting the benign development of the dioxin monitoring market, which not only leads to poor credibility of dioxin monitoring results, but also makes law-abiding enterprises face enormous pressure and challenges, which has a negative impact on dioxin monitoring and supervision.
(4) The cost of waste incineration pollution control has increased. By November 2024, 975 domestic waste incineration power plants and 2,162 incineration production lines had been built nationwide, with an incineration capacity of 1.085 million tons/day, which has exceeded the target of the "Tenth Five-Year Plan"; At the same time, the output of fly ash is about 8 million to 10 million tons/year, showing a steady upward trend. With the national goal of reducing carbon and pollution and green and low-carbon development, the pollution emission requirements are becoming more and more stringent, and the waste incineration industry is facing further upgrading and transformation to achieve ultra-low emission and low-carbon operation, resulting in higher and higher pollution control costs of dioxins and heavy metals in flue gas and fly ash. In addition, the subsidy policy for waste incineration power generation has entered the declining stage, and the national and provincial subsidy funds are in arrears, and the combined effects of factors such as arrears of superimposed waste treatment fees, insufficient waste treatment capacity, redundancy of incineration treatment capacity and upgrading of flue gas standards have led to high financial pressure and high operating costs for enterprises, which has increased the risk of production and operation of enterprises and emission control of pollutants such as dioxins.
3. Progress in Key Core Technologies
On-line detection technology of dioxins. The core components of this technology include high-efficiency flue gas sampler, multi-channel preconcentrator, gas chromatography, deep ultraviolet dual-beam tunable pulse laser, system control and data processing modules, and all of them have been localized, with the localization rate reaching 100%. This technology has been applied in some enterprises.
Long-term sampling technology of dioxins based on filtration condensation method. The advantages of this technology are that it can not only realize long-term sampling of dioxin samples in flue gas, but also carry out intelligent comprehensive sampling judgment, one-button sampling control, data transmission and remote monitoring in the process of dioxin sampling, so as to realize continuous, stable and long-term sampling of dioxin and improve the representativeness of collected samples.
Mobile on-line dioxin detection system. The system is a mobile on-line detection system which installs the on-line detection equipment for dioxin applied to a fixed source in a space with a certain cleanliness, efficiently and continuously samples, removes dust and removes water from the flue gas of the emission source through the on-line detection equipment of the fixed source, and combines with laser selective ionization detection means to realize multi-point detection of dioxin in flue gas of single/multiple incinerators. The system can provide temporary continuous online detection of dioxins for incineration enterprises and testing institutions by renting and selling, assist incineration enterprises to adjust their operating conditions, and indirectly realize dioxin emission reduction.
Online intelligent control platform for dioxins. Through a comprehensive and systematic in-depth study on the relationship between dozens of operating parameters and dioxin emissions in the whole process of domestic waste incineration, an online prediction model of dioxin was successfully developed, and on this basis, an online intelligent management and control platform of dioxin was developed, which integrates the functions of software prediction, manual interaction and feedback guidance. The intelligent management and control platform can accurately predict the emission trend of dioxin in domestic waste incineration by accessing the parameters of full working conditions. At present, this technology has been applied in on-line monitoring of dioxin in domestic waste.
High performance PTFE coated filter bag for dust removal. The PTFE material was modified and compounded by using advanced thermal compounding technology, adding special additives or adopting multi-layer composite structure, so that a firm chemical bond was formed between the PTFE film and the base fabric, and a thinner, more uniform PTFE microporous film with high temperature resistance, corrosion resistance and high filtration accuracy was developed. At the same time, by installing pressure and temperature sensors on the filter bag and collecting the working parameters of the filter bag in real time, the real-time monitoring and remote control of the running state of the filter bag can be realized, and the problems such as blockage and damage of the filter bag can be found and solved in time, thus improving the reliability of the equipment and reducing the running cost.
Large-scale equipment for continuous indirect thermal decomposition of dioxin in fly ash at low temperature. Development of low-temperature thermal decomposition equipment for dioxin in incineration fly ash, with a single equipment handling capacity of 50 tons/day, continuous operation time of more than 330 days/year, air leakage rate of equipment operation of less than 0.1%, multi-stage heating temperature difference of less than 30℃, dioxin decomposition efficiency of more than 99%, disposal energy consumption of less than 20 kg standard coal/ton, and development of a single equipment handling capacity of 2 tons/day, 10 tons/day, 30 tons/day. Compared with the high-temperature melting technology, the energy consumption of the dioxin decomposition process of the equipment is reduced by more than 85%, and the waste gas pollution emission is reduced by more than 70%.
Low-carbon detoxification of fly ash-upgrading of detoxified products and efficient resource utilization technology. Aiming at the treatment and disposal of municipal solid waste incineration fly ash, a detoxification technology of municipal solid waste incineration fly ash coupled with low-temperature thermal decomposition of dioxins and efficient elution of chlorine salts and solidification of heavy metals by mechanochemical method was formed, and a demonstration project of harmless treatment and resource utilization of municipal solid waste incineration fly ash at low temperature was built, with a disposal capacity of 50,000 tons/year and a low cost per ton of ash.
Low temperature and low sulfur waste incineration flue gas treatment equipment. The equipment is suitable for the treatment of low-temperature flue gas (200℃ ~ 260℃) and low-concentration sulfur-containing flue gas. The online activation system technology of unit design can realize online and flexible activation of each unit and effectively inhibit the generation of ammonium bisulfate. At the same time, the combination of deacidification conditioning pretreatment technology and low temperature SCR technology can reduce the synthesis of dioxin precursors and carriers, thus effectively controlling the generation of dioxins.
Development prospect in 2025
Promote research and development of new technologies and equipment for dioxin monitoring. Under the background of the national standard "Technical Requirements and Detection Methods of Automatic Sampling System for Dioxin in Exhaust Gas from Stationary Pollution Sources" to be issued soon, we will further increase the innovative research and development of automatic sampling of Dioxin, online monitoring of Dioxin and other rapid monitoring methods, break through the key core technical difficulties, and constantly shift the technical pilot to application demonstration to support effective monitoring and supervision of dioxin pollution and discharge in China.
Increase the research and development of intelligent control technology for dioxin in solid waste incineration. Focusing on the whole process of solid waste incineration, innovative research and development of adaptive control technology for the whole process of solid waste incineration, using technologies such as deep learning and machine algorithm, real-time tracking analysis and automatic adjustment of the running state of the whole process of incineration, achieving accurate control of waste incineration and stable discharge of dioxins; Establish a forecasting and early warning system for dioxin emission to control the potential risk of excessive dioxin emission; Build a digital management and control platform for the whole process, and rely on technologies such as artificial intelligence and Internet of Things to improve overall operational efficiency and real-time management and control capabilities.
Carry out research on the coordinated disposal and resource utilization of solid waste. Increase the research on the co-disposal technology of incineration fly ash, municipal sludge, stale garbage and other solid wastes, systematically clarify the feasibility of co-disposal technology of solid wastes and the possibility of dioxin and other discharge standards, and improve the comprehensive disposal capacity of solid wastes; Overcome the technical bottlenecks of solid waste resource utilization such as low-temperature thermal decomposition, high-temperature sintering and high-temperature melting, clarify the synergistic removal mechanism of pollutants such as dioxins in the process of solid waste resource utilization, and promote the popularization and application of solid waste resource utilization technology.
Source：https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/wH5VSEtG-YrM_RJsuVJaxA