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China's sludge treatment started late, in the past ten years, the overall development of the industry is slow and not smooth, the "Twelfth Five-Year Plan" and "Thirteenth Five-Year Plan" goals have failed twice, and even the problem of "failure before prosperity" in the market has occurred. Looking forward to the "14th Five-Year Plan", with the gradual solution of problems such as policies, technologies, and profit models, Chenyu believes that the sludge treatment industry will usher in three major turns:
▪ The prerequisites are already in place and the policy is beginning to tilt towards the sludge treatment industry;
▪ Under the 30·60 double carbon target, the technical route of sludge treatment has become clearer;
▪ Cost control, stable source, clear direction, leading enterprises have found a way to stabilize profits.
Chenyu estimates that In the next five years, China's sludge production will maintain a compound growth of 2.3%, reaching 16,000 tons by 2025 (including domestic sludge and industrial sludge), corresponding to which the sludge treatment market will maintain a compound growth of 10.8%, reaching a scale of 45.3 billion yuan by 2025.
The prerequisites are already in place, and the policy is beginning to tilt towards the sludge treatment industry
Low priority and limited financial funds, early policy support for sludge treatment is not enough: from the perspective of the treatment process, sewage treatment is a prerequisite for sludge treatment, and water pollution has liquidity, the negative impact on drinking water sources is more obvious, the priority of sewage treatment is naturally higher than sludge treatment; from the perspective of capital investment, if sludge treatment is increased, the total investment of sewage treatment projects needs to increase by about 30%, considering that sewage treatment problems still require a lot of capital investment, and the previous sludge treatment facilities are not running well. If the sludge treatment is forcibly increased, it may not only fail to achieve the investment effect, but also distract the energy of sewage treatment.
In this context, governments at all levels finally choose to put the sludge treatment first, and give priority to the construction of sewage treatment facilities and pipe networks, which leads to the obvious tendency of "heavy water and light mud" in China, and it is not surprising that the target of the harmless treatment rate of urban sludge at the prefecture level and above in the "Twelfth Five-Year Plan" and the "Thirteenth Five-Year Plan" has failed twice (see Figure 1).
However, the above problems are gradually improving, mainly due to the following two reasons:
First, sewage treatment is becoming more and more mature. In recent years, China's urban sewage treatment task has been basically completed, the urban sewage treatment rate has reached more than 95%, and the new capacity of sewage treatment in the "14th Five-Year Plan" has also decreased significantly (see Figure 2). With the saturation of sewage treatment, the previously neglected problem of sludge treatment has regained attention.
Second, the policy east wind is gradually coming. Compared with before, the center of gravity of the 14th Five-Year Plan has shifted significantly backwards, and sludge treatment is on the right track. At the level of governance planning, the goal formulation is more targeted, fully reflecting the determination to complete, according to the "14th Five-Year Plan", the harmless treatment rate of urban sludge should reach more than 90%, the disposal level of the established towns in the Yangtze River Economic Belt, the Yellow River Basin, and the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region has been significantly improved, and it is clear that the scale of new harmless disposal facilities is not less than 20,000 tons of wet sludge / day; at the construction task level, the policy is encouraged to mandatory, and it is clearly proposed that the new sewage treatment facility construction plan must include a clear sludge treatment path. Sludge treatment facilities should be included in the construction planning of local sewage treatment facilities.
Under the 30·60 double carbon target, the technical route of sludge treatment has become clearer
In the past, the sludge treatment industry standards and technical routes were not clear, such as the "Twelfth Five-Year Plan" mentioned the problem of sludge treatment, but at that time, the development of sludge treatment technology in China was just beginning, and foreign mature technology may not be suitable for China, and the industry did not have a clear idea of what kind of treatment method to use. The "Technical Guidelines for Sludge Treatment and Disposal in Urban Sewage Treatment Plants (Trial)" issued in 2011 generally includes almost all sludge treatment technologies, vaguely puts forward the basic principles of safety and environmental protection, recycling, and local conditions, and does not specify what is the best sludge treatment plan and standard, and local governments and enterprises at all levels lack technical guidance.
Under such conditions, sludge treatment is mainly based on the most convenient landfill in most areas. Taking 2018 as an example, nearly half of China's sludge has become an emergency landfill (see Figure 3), although landfill is not the most suitable sludge treatment method: occupying a large land area, the site is not suitable for finding; often the symptoms are not cured, because the sludge contains heavy metals and germs, it is easy to cause secondary pollution when encountering water, including groundwater pollution caused by the leakage of harmful components, and nutrients in the sludge make a large number of pathogenic bacteria breed and multiply.
With the "14th Five-Year Plan" and the 30.60 double carbon target, the technical route of sludge treatment is gradually becoming clear:
First, the "14th Five-Year Plan" clearly put forward in the technical requirements to limit sludge landfill, steadily promote resources, require new sewage treatment plants must have a clear sludge treatment path, encourage the use of hot water solution, anaerobic digestion, aerobic fermentation, drying and other ways for harmless treatment, under the premise of achieving sludge stabilization and harmless treatment, can promote land improvement, wasteland afforestation, seedling care, landscaping and agricultural utilization and other resources, and encourage the recycling of sludge energy resources.
Second, after the 30·60 double carbon target is proposed, the future sludge treatment and disposal will be aimed at energy conservation and energy resource recovery, which puts forward a clearer technical path direction for sludge treatment. For example, in energy recovery, anaerobic digestion is the preferred route, such as the Danish sewage plant BIOFOS to achieve energy surplus through sludge digestion capacity (see Figure 4).
In terms of resource recovery, compared with aerobic composting, dry incineration and hot water solution are better resource methods, which deserve attention. As the fastest and most thorough final disposal technology to achieve sludge reduction, stabilization and harmlessness, the technical route of dry incineration is also easier to go through; the technical route of hot water solution is shown in Figure 6, and the production process is clean and the generated sludge resources are diversified.
Cost control, stable source, clear direction, leading enterprises have found a way to stabilize profits
For a long time, the sewage treatment fees levied by the government cannot meet the cost of the normal operation of sewage plants, and if the sludge treatment fees are added, they will either increase the financial pressure of the government or increase the economic burden of the expropriated people. Because the pricing mechanism of disposal costs has not been straightened out, sludge treatment has always relied on subsidies in the past, so when the government investment is insufficient, enterprises are prone to losses, which also leads to relevant enterprises participating in the sludge industry more cautiously, dare not blindly expand production capacity. The entire industry shows the characteristics of low market concentration, and the competitive landscape is relatively unstable.
Even so, we have also seen some companies with excellent profit performance, such as CLP Environmental Protection and Peng Harrier Environmental Protection, both of which have shown different degrees of growth in sludge treatment revenue and gross profit margin in recent years (see Figure 7).
After analysis, Chen Yu found that enterprises that can obtain good returns usually have the following three characteristics:
First, the cost of commissioning is low. CLP Environmental Protection relies on the resource advantages of electricity + municipality, "high-efficiency and energy-saving sludge drying equipment" and other core technologies to expand the coal-fired coupled sludge power generation mode, which has certain cost advantages; Peng Harrier Environmental Protection is the introduction of Japanese YM bacteria ultra-high temperature aerobic fermentation technology, fermentation does not need to add excipients, low operating costs, coupled with simple treatment system, but also save investment costs.
Second, the source of sludge is sufficient. CLP Environmental Protection and Hebei, Zhejiang, Henan, Guangdong and other governments and enterprises reached a cooperation intention, planning, construction of sludge coupling power generation base, the local government, enterprises promised to provide corresponding support for sludge sources; Peng Harrier Environmental Protection and local state-owned enterprise giants such as Shaanxi Environmental Protection Group to cooperate to promote sludge treatment in Shaanxi Province, in the region of the sludge source has a considerable guarantee.
Third, the direction of the sludge is clear. CLP Environmental Protection and Shenzhen Rundian, a subsidiary of China Resources Power, signed a strategic cooperation agreement to realize a new model of technology, capital and market bundled development, sludge in the drying after the collaborative incineration (mixing) to generate electricity, expand the solid-waste coupling power generation industry; Peng harrier environmental protection has created a "Changchun model", the use of sludge fermentation compost, back to the field into fertilizer, in Jilin, Fujian, Xinjiang and other demonstration projects and The Nangong composting plant cooperated with Beijing Sanitation Group have achieved good results.
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