China: Project for HFC23 Decomposition at Changshu 3F Zhonghao NewChemical Materials Co. Ltd, Changshu, Jiangsu Province

Located in Changshu City of Jiangsu Province, Changshu 3F Zhonghao New Chemical Materials Co. Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as “3F Zhonghao”) is a leading fluoro chemical enterprise in China with a site area of 228,900m2 and more than 900 employees. The main products of 3F Zhonghao are HCFC22, HFC32, HFC125, HCFC142b, HFC152a, HFC227ea, TFP, and AHF. The HCFC22 production plant currently has two production lines (A and B) owned and operated by 3F Zhonghao with total annual production capacity of 40,000 tons (production line A and line B each has individual capacity of 20,000tons). 3F Zhonghao’s production has been increasing annually to meet increasing demand, with total annual production at 14,375.963 tons in 2002, 19.974.024 tons in 2003 and 30,979 tons in 2004. Meanwhile, 3F Zhonghao was in the process of expanding its TFE production capacity by adding a new third HCFC22 production line to increase total HCFC22 production capacity by 12,000 tons. The destruction of the HFC23 emissions from the new HCFC22 production line was, however, not included in the calculations of emission reductions for the project, since the applied AM0001/Version 03 methodology only covers the destruction of HFC23 waste streams from existing facilities.

As a result of implementing this Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) project, 3F Zhonghao has installed an incineration facility to decompose HFC23 generated from the existing HCFC22 units into carbon dioxide (CO2) and hydrogen fluoride (HF). This process effectively reduced the HFC23 emissions from the HCFC22 manufacture. The decomposition facility employed in this project has been imported from a foreign technology provider whose HFC23 destruction technology is reliable, efficient and well reputed. In the project, the destruction process decomposed the HFC23 by heating it to more than 12000C in a thermal oxidizer with air, steam and NG. The off-gas from the thermal oxidizer was then cooled down and neutralized before being vented to the atmosphere. During this HFC23 thermal destruction process, hydrofluoric acid (HF) with the concentration of 30% - 40% was produced. These HF by-products were transported and sold to another company. The annual CO2 emission due to the transport of HF was around 0.3 tCO2e. This amount is very small and therefore estimated to be negligible.