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Tianjin is a large coastal city in the northern part of China with a population of 3.7 million people. The high-tech plant occupies a 160,000 m2 site on the out-skirts of the city. It represents Novo Nordisk's largest-ever engineering project. Production of enzymes began in 1998 for supply to the Asia Pacific market. The plant is still in an early phase and production capacity will be expanded during 1999 and 2000. The number of employees at year-end was 142.
Major impacts
The main impacts on the environment are the use of fresh drinking water, as well as discharges of nitrogen, phosphorus and organic matter in waste water.
A waste water treatment plant has been built based on the same design as Kalundborg. The spent biomass from production is treated separately and delivered free of charge to local farms as NovoGro® fertilizer. It has a high content of nutrients and Chinese trials have shown encouraging results. Rice yields could be increased by 10% while decreasing the use of artificial fertilizer by 25-35%.
Breaches of regulatory limit values
Two breaches of the COD limits in waste water discharges were recorded. These were due to poor sedimentation when operating the biological treatment plant at low capacity. We have successfully remedied the situation by adding more sludge from a neighbouring factory to keep the biological treatment plant working optimally.
Environmental focus
The Tianjin area faces a water pollution problem. Many companies discharge untreated waste into the rivers, and coastal waters have become polluted. In the summer months, this has led to the excessive growth of algae, which disrupts other aquatic life.
Due to the high levels of river pollution, the TEDA (Tianjin Economic Development Area) has set very high standards for waste water treatment. This has called for new methods to reduce the phosphorus by precipitation, which presented a major challenge for us during 1998 because the performance of the biological treatment was adversely affected. In 1999 we aim to use 50% of our waste water for irrigation of the green areas on the TEDA industrial estate, one of the largest in China. |
