Chapter 272 Special Industry

Chapter 272 Special Industry

Chapter 272 Special Industry
Weicheng.

The much-discussed symposium on navigation on the Yellow River did not attract the attention of ordinary citizens in this city.

Instead, the Minqin Garment Factory under the Minqin Group, the Weicheng Airport and the Weicheng Blue Whale Airship Manufacturing Factory under the Blue Whale Company are more eye-catching. These three industries have siphoned off a large number of labor forces in the local area, and have therefore become a household topic of conversation after dinner.

In the early morning, the atmosphere of the market is everywhere in the streets, and various restaurants have opened early.

It was past eight o'clock and the sky was just beginning to lighten.

Several tank trucks arrived at a street dominated by restaurants. After several staff members got off, they pried open the manhole cover.

"A Tie, let's start!"

A worker wearing a gas mask inserts a pipe into the sewer.

The team leader who had just spoken, taking the drawings provided by the Municipal Facilities Management Office, found another manhole cover at a lower position based on the height difference of the sewer, and pried it open directly.

Finally, we came to the third manhole cover, which was also the lowest one. After prying open the manhole cover, we threw down a specially designed boron bean silk airbag and pressed the air pump switch.

Buzz buzz buzz... As compressed air fills the airbag, it quickly expands in the sewer, directly blocking the sewer below.

"It's time to start."

"Got it." The driver of a water tanker truck carrying a load of water picked up a high-pressure water gun and sprayed tap water into the sewer. As the high-pressure tap water rushed in, the sludge in the sewer began to roll and the liquid became turbid.

Another worker at the wellhead started pumping operations and sucked the bubbling turbid water into the tank truck.

The equipment inside the tanker also started to operate, sucking out the water and then transporting it to the clean water tanker, which was the one doing the flushing.

The remaining sludge blocks are so dry that they cannot be drier anymore and are automatically discharged by the equipment into the bucket of the dump truck next door.

After working continuously for half an hour, the dump truck bed was almost full and everyone stopped.

The dump truck drove away to unload the sludge blocks, while the remaining staff changed a section of the sewer and repeated the previous operation.

The owner of a roujiamo shop on the street watched for a long time, and then, when business slowed down a bit, he started chatting with an old customer.

"Old Bao, why is the municipal government so active today?"

Lao Bao, who was eating Roujiamo and Hu La Tang, glanced at the staff outside the window and said, "These people are not from the municipal government. They should be from the company that was just built in the south of the city."

The Roujiamo shop owner was wiping the table while curiously asking, "South City? What are they doing with the sludge from the sewer? Did they contract a project from the Environmental Sanitation Bureau?"

"Who knows." Lao Bao continued to eat.

Another customer took a spoonful of spicy soup and said, "I know a little bit about it. I heard that it is for recycling sludge. The contract was signed a few days ago. Minqin Environmental Protection Company has contracted the entire Weicheng sewer and river sludge treatment. The price is one yuan a year."

"One dollar a year? Wouldn't that be a loss?" Old Bao looked surprised.

"Who knows? Anyway, the contract has been signed for 10 years."

“Can sludge really make money?”

The owner of the Roujiamo shop said bluntly: "There is some gutter oil in the sewers on our street, but it shouldn't be worth that much. After all, many shops recycle the gutter oil and sell it themselves."

An uninformed customer looked at the spicy soup in front of him and couldn't eat it anymore: "Lao Ma, aren't you afraid of being reported for selling gutter oil?"

"Haha, now all the waste oil is used to make diesel, who would use it as cooking oil?" Lao Ma picked up the cooking oil he used: "Cooking oil is much cheaper now than before, people can only use it for a little longer, using waste oil is a dead end."

"Yes."

The diners were talking about it.

The staff of Minqin Environmental Protection Company are still working on the street.

After being dried, these fluffy sludge blocks were transported to the suburbs in the south of Weicheng. There is an old factory here that was acquired last month. It is the office location of Minqin Environmental Protection Weicheng Branch and also the production center.

Not only Weicheng, but also the sewage sludge from the surrounding small counties and towns is handed over to Minqin Environmental Protection Company for disposal.

As soon as the sludge mine is pulled back, it is rehydrated and then the first step is rough separation to separate the oil and soluble inorganic salts.

The remaining sludge is then sent to the microbial power plant for biomass power generation. After biomass power generation, the sludge can then be sent for biogas fermentation.

Finally, the biogas slurry and residue are sent to the bacterial farm, where bacteria are used to enrich the heavy metal pollutants in the sludge.

These bacteria are classified into different categories and can enrich elements such as gold, silver, copper, mercury, lead, cadmium, chromium, zinc, and nickel in the sludge.

After the bacteria have accumulated these heavy metal elements, they are collected and inactivated, then they can absorb water and dry into special mineral mud.

As the Guanzhong Plain is a region with relatively developed heavy industry and relatively little natural precipitation, the content of heavy metals in local urban sewage sludge and river sludge is relatively high.

One ton of dry sludge can produce about 1.3 kilograms of copper, and the copper content in dry sludge is about 0.13%.

Chromium is about 0.12%, zinc is 0.4% and lead is 0.05%.

Especially the sludge recovered from those heavy industrial areas, the content of various heavy metals can sometimes be dozens of times that of ordinary urban sludge, and it also contains a large amount of precious metals such as gold, silver, and platinum.

As for why traditional industries do not recycle these precious metals, it is mainly because it is not cost-effective.

Unless they have Hailufeng's biomining technology, they can forget about recycling these things from waste efficiently and at low cost.

Minqin Environmental Protection Company obtained technical authorization from its parent company and used a combination of various technologies to achieve water and electricity freedom within the factory, so that it could make money from sludge.

This is actually equivalent to mining.

Although the mineral content of urban sludge and industrial sludge is much less than that of natural rich mines, it does not mean that it has no value.

Under the multi-layer pressing of Minqin Environmental Protection Company, these sludges produce a large amount of electricity, methane, heavy metals, and clean organic fertilizer after heavy metal adsorption.

Since Weicheng is adjacent to Chang'an City, the entire Chang'an sewer system is also contracted by Minqin Environmental Protection Company.

Various heavy metal ore blocks are stored in the company's temporary warehouse. When the quantity is sufficient, they will be transported by airship to a special heavy metal smelting base to smelt the heavy metals.

The professional inspection team of Minqin Environmental Protection Company is currently conducting sludge sampling in various channels of the Weihe River, especially in industrially developed areas or former industrial areas, which are the focus of inspection.

After all, although the pollution in industrial areas has been controlled, it does not mean that the pollutants that remained have disappeared, especially heavy metals, which can easily remain in the soil and river sludge.

Why do many people in America not like to eat freshwater fish?

It's not as industrially developed as America was before. Moreover, in the era when their industry was developed, there were no strict environmental protection constraints, and sewage and pollutants were directly discharged.

Therefore, many rivers in America now have excessive levels of heavy metals in the sludge under the riverbed.

The same is true in Europe. The Thames, Danube, Seine and Baltic Sea are all waters with serious heavy metal pollution.

Although the current pollution situation in the Wei River has been curbed to a certain extent, due to the surge in water use in various aspects over the years and the decrease in river flow, the river's ability to carry away pollutants has decreased, so there are still a lot of pollutants deposited at the bottom of the river.

This is another reason why many experts and scholars oppose completely cutting off the Yellow River.

After the Yellow River is cut off, the water in the middle reaches will accumulate various heavy metals, fertilizers, and chemical detergents over time, leading to eutrophication of the water.

Water must flow to carry pollutants away from the area. The reason why water pollution control in the southern region is relatively easy is that there is abundant rainfall, which brings huge flow to the rivers every year. This water can dilute the heavy metals, fertilizers, chemical detergents and other pollution in the sludge, and quickly flush these pollutants into the ocean.

The precipitation in the northern region is relatively small. In addition, various places continue to intercept rivers and build dams for development, the runoff of surface rivers has decreased, and many pollutants can only remain locally.

In the Economic and Technological Development Zone in the northern suburbs of Chang'an.

Inside the Shaanxi Heavy Duty Automobile factory.

Ye Shouye, a vice president of the company, took Mo Tiancheng, the general manager of Minqin Environmental Protection Company, to visit the factory.

"Boss Mo, this is our factory's sewage treatment plant."

"How much does it cost to process?" Mo Tiancheng asked with a smile.

Ye Shouye replied helplessly: "Haha, I won't hide it from Mr. Mo. The processing cost is very high. It is mainly due to the use of various chemical neutralizing agents, and some filter elements are basically replaced every few months."

"Then Mr. Ye, do you think we can cooperate?"

Ye Shouye raised his head like a chicken pecking at rice: "Sure, I'm willing to do that. After all, it can reduce costs and increase efficiency."

Even if you don't give face to the monk, you have to give face to the Buddha. What's more, this kind of cooperation is a good thing for Shaanxi Heavy Duty Automobile.

According to the quotation and technical standards of Minqin Environmental Protection Company, their sewage treatment costs can be reduced by about 70% and the water recycling rate can reach 95%. These two items combined can save their factory a large part of expenses each year.

Moreover, Hailufeng Company is also one of the key cooperative enterprises of Shaanxi Heavy Duty Automobile.

The specially customized versions of biodiesel trucks by Hailufeng Company are from Shaanxi Heavy Duty Truck, FAW Jiefang and China National Heavy Duty Truck Group.

Currently, Hailufeng Company has three types of large trucks, namely ordinary fuel trucks, battery-swap trucks and biodiesel trucks.

Among them, ordinary fuel trucks are no longer purchased, and battery trucks and biodiesel trucks are the main force.

Shaanxi Heavy Duty Automobile mainly supplies biodiesel trucks. In addition, Shaanxi Heavy Duty Automobile's parent company Weichai Power is also one of the core cooperative enterprises of Hailufeng Company. This is because Hailufeng Company requires companies that provide it with engineering vehicles and agricultural machinery equipment to either use electric power or biodiesel power. Traditional power equipment will not be purchased at all.

After all, ordinary diesel and gasoline are destined to be eliminated. Hailufeng Company had no choice but to purchase related equipment before. Now that there are alternatives, it is natural that it will not continue to purchase.

In addition, those who have already purchased traditional diesel and gasoline equipment also require manufacturers to provide improvement plans to convert the engines into equipment that can use biodiesel.

Companies including Zoomlion Heavy Industry Science & Technology Co., Ltd. and Sany Heavy Industry Co., Ltd. are also very cooperative because they have seen the future trends in the country. Biodiesel and electric power will inevitably become the power core of equipment. There is definitely no future for continuing to use traditional diesel engine equipment.

You have to know that extracting oil and refining diesel and gasoline is not as convenient as farming and harvesting soybeans. Oil will be exhausted. Once the oil fields are exhausted, it means that a city that was born out of mining will decline.

The industry that can grow crops, harvest soybeans, and then refine biodiesel is a nearly endless supply of biological oil fields that can support the long-term and stable development of a city.

Therefore, many domestic automobile companies either switch to cars with biodiesel engines or adopt electric cars.

Hailufeng Company has its own large soybean fields, so it can produce a huge amount of soybean oil every year. Except for a small part of this soybean oil that is processed into edible oil, the rest is all used for the battery fluid of sponge batteries and the refining of biodiesel.

Since the two parties have already cooperated, Ye Shouye must give them face.

Mo Tiancheng targeted the wastewater from automobile manufacturers such as Shaanxi Heavy Duty Automobile because the wastewater from these companies contains a large amount of heavy metal pollutants. For example, electroplating treatment and electrophoretic coating produce a lot of heavy metals and chemicals in these process links.

The traditional treatment method is mainly to use cooperative neutralization reaction for adsorption and sedimentation, and then hand over the sludge to a specialized treatment company for treatment, or purchase various equipment for treatment by yourself.

Minqin Environmental Protection Technology has taken a fancy to these heavy metals, not to mention that it can make money by selling equipment, and then regularly bring back sludge from the factory for refining.

Not only did the factory not get any money for handling this sludge, it also had to pay part of the money to the Minqin Environmental Protection Company. The reason is that in the past, this kind of sludge had to be paid to other companies for disposal, so Minqin Environmental Protection would naturally not pay in return.

However, the fees paid by the factory are much lower than before, which is also an important reason why companies including Shaanxi Heavy Duty Automobile are willing to cooperate.

As for the fact that Minqin Environmental Protection can make money from it, that is their ability and there is nothing to say about it. If they think they can also make money from it, they can just set up a sludge recycling plant.

Minqin Environmental Protection Company currently has a large number of subsidiaries located in some industrially developed regions in China, especially in areas with concentrated industries such as machinery manufacturing, electronic processing, precision instruments, and chemical electroplating.

For example, a subsidiary was specially established in Meilong Town, Haifeng County, Shanmei, the headquarters of Hailufeng Company.

The reason for coming here to build a subsidiary is, of course, because there used to be a large number of gold and silver processing factories in the area, which led to the accumulation of a large amount of gold, silver, zinc, copper, chromium, mercury and other elements in the local soil and river sludge.

Just by pumping sludge from the river in Meilun Town, this sludge treatment plant recovered 8.6 kilograms of gold and 74 kilograms of silver from the sludge in less than a week.

This is like opening a gold mine.

In the next step, Minqin Environmental Protection will plan to enter Shuibei, Pengcheng and Panyu, Yangcheng. These two areas are also relatively well-known gold and silver processing production areas in China.

In any area where gold and silver are processed, the content of elements such as gold, silver, copper and mercury in the sewage and river sludge will be relatively high, which facilitates the enrichment of bacteria.

In addition, Guizhou Province, as the core mercury mineralization belt and mining area in the country, is also a severely affected area of ​​mercury pollution.

Therefore, Minqin Environmental Protection Company also plans to enter the area in the near future to carry out sludge and garbage recycling in areas with more mercury mines, with the aim of extracting mercury from local soil, sludge and garbage.

Although Hailufeng Company's mercury-silicon nanotube room-temperature superconductor is currently in a highly confidential stage, it does not mean that it has no applications.

Many institutions and laboratories that can maintain strict confidentiality are already doing relevant application development and principle research.

Even the government has gotten involved, quietly searching for mercury mines around the world and building up strategic reserves of mercury.

As the world's first material that can maintain superconducting effects at room temperature, mercury silicon nanotube materials will definitely be used on a large scale in the future.

Therefore, mercury reserves have become a necessary preparation for the development of the superconducting industry.

Hailufeng Company knows that mines abroad are difficult to mine, and European and American capital tycoons hate Hailufeng Company and Jiang Miao and his wife almost to the core. Therefore, once Hailufeng Company enters the international market, it will face various suppressions and tricks.

Jiang Miao has no idea about the foreign mining industry in particular.

Instead of going abroad to mine, it is better to cooperate with domestic aerospace companies to promote outer space mining.

After all, on Earth, European and American capital forces can secretly obstruct Hailufeng Company from obtaining minerals, but in outer space, a completely new environment that depends entirely on fists and technology, Hailufeng Company will not be afraid of them.

The asteroids and the moon in outer space contain many precious metals and heavy metal minerals. There are even entire asteroids made entirely of heavy metals and precious metals. As long as these precious metals and specific rare elements can be mined back to Earth, even if the cost is high, it is acceptable.

What's more, Hailufeng Company now does have various cooperation with domestic aerospace companies.

For example, developing silicon carbide nanotube materials for use in launch vehicles; using the Blue Whale airship to lift launch vehicles to the Qiongzhou launch base; and developing efficient and low-cost hydrogen storage systems.

These projects are closely related to Hailufeng Company.

Although Hailufeng Company has not announced its entry into the aerospace field, in fact, its products and technologies have long entered the aerospace industry chain.

In order to obtain more industrial raw materials, going to outer space is an important direction at present.

After all, obtaining industrial raw materials from the international market is sometimes full of uncertainties, especially those rare minerals that are monopolized by foreign countries. Once more are imported, prices will skyrocket.

Although it is possible to reduce dependence on some foreign monopoly minerals through alternative products, it is not a long-term solution.

Because the uses of many elements, although they can be replaced, may cause performance fluctuations, or the rarity of the substitutes is also very high.

(End of this chapter)