Evaluation of cleaner production technology integration for the Chinese herbal medicine industry using carbon flow analysis

摘要

The manufacturing sector was an early promoter of CO2 mitigation and low-carbon development strategies in many countries. The basic unit for these development strategies is enterprises. In order to quantify their performance on resource saving and emission reduction, this study proposed a carbon flow analysis (CFA) approach based on substance flow analysis (SFA). Four special evaluation indicators including the percentage of carbon stored in the product (RC-P), the percentage of carbon as CO2 (RC-CO2), the percentage of carbon in solid waste (RC-SW), and the percentage of carbon in COD (RC-COD) were developed. A case study was conducted in an herbal medicine plant, which consumes huge amounts of fossil fuel and discharges 255 tons of biomass waste per year. Cleaner production (CP) technologies were introduced to achieve low-carbon transformation and the CFA approach was used to evaluate the effectiveness. After implementing CP technologies, RC-P was 4.23%, 1.65 times higher than before, meaning that the carbon utilization efficiency of the firm increased by 65%. The RC-CO2 was 62.70%, meaning that an 11.13% reduction was obtained. The RC-SW increased by 23.05%, and the absolute amount of carbon in solid waste was reduced by 45.35 tons. If the whole Chinese herbal medicine industry implemented this CP technology integration, it would save 914,622 tce of fossil fuels, reduce herb residue discharge by 1.14 million tons and reduce CO2 emissions by 1.72 million tons per year. This research provided a model and an effective assessment tool for low-carbon transformation of industries that produce large amounts of biomass waste. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.