Study on the construction of ecological network of a heavy chemical industry park based on industrial metabolism analysis: A case study of an energy heavy chemical industry

Abstract

The industry characteristics of high pollution and high emission of energy heavy chemical industry pose a potential threat to the regional environmental safety. Therefore, it is very important to develop circular economy and carry out ecological transformation to achieve the pollution reduction and control. Based on the industrial metabolic theory and method, taking Energy Heavy Chemical Industry Park in Jinjie of Yulin City as the research object, this paper establishes the development mode of circular economy by constructing ecological chain network and conducted a comparative evaluation in lateral and vertical latitude using the method of energy analysis. The results showed that the energy yield in the cycle development phase (2015 ∼) increases by 51.4% and 26.4% respectively in comparison with the first phase (2008-2015) and the initial development phase (2002-2008). The energy investment rate decreased by 4% and 1.3% respectively; the environmental load rate decreased by 9% and 3.7% respectively and the sustainable energy index increased by 64.6% and 29.2% respectively. It demonstrated that the production efficiency, ecological efficiency, competitiveness and capacity for sustainable development have been significantly improved. In terms of horizontal comparison, the energy investment rate in the cycle of development (2015 ∼) was lower than the average of five provinces in northwestern China by 22%; the environmental load rate was higher than the average of five provinces in northwest China by 0.01%. This indicates that the performance of the system is higher; but the environmental load rate is somewhat high within the acceptable range. It indicates that the environmental pressure in industrial parks is larger and the system ecological efficiency needs to be further improved.