媒体访谈 The 2008 Olympics Water Cube looks blue but it's actually very green.
That's because construction of the celebrated Beijing National Aquatics Center includes cutting-edge energy saving and recyclable building materials to serve the "Green Olympics" concept.
That's because a large amount of paperbacked plasterboard used in the eye-catching masterpiece is made of recycled industrial waste - de-sulphurized gypsum discharged by coal-fired power generation.
The Water Cube's new recycled cladding material supplier is Beijing New Building Materials Public limited Company, a fully owned subsidiary of China National Building Material Group Corporation (CNBM), the nation's largest building material conglomerate.
CNBM, as the nation's major building material producer, has experimented with various industrial waste materials to develop new wall cladding materials.
It currently uses coal waste to fire building brick replacing clay brick, and coal powder ash to produce cement. CNMB also utilizes de-sulphurized gypsum generated by thermal power plants to produce plasterboard, and i to produce mineral wool acoustic board using blast furnace slag.
CNBM's new cladding materials production lines can all utilize and reuse 20 million tons of industrial waste annually.
Its plasterboard made from recycled de-sulphurized gypsum measures an annual capacity of 40 million square meters.
It is estimated that if the company uses 100 million tons of coal ore waste and coal powder ash it can save 6 million tons of coal equivalent.
"The building materials industry has great potential for the recycling business and China currently has roughly 1.7 billion tons of coal waste available to be exploited," says Yao Yan, the dean of China Building Materials Academy and vice president of CNBM.
In 2007 the building material industry's energy consumption exceeded the equivalent of 195 million tons of coal and accounted for 10 percent of the energy used by China's industrial sectors.
"As a high energy, resource-consuming and heavy pollution industry, energy conservation in the building material industry is crucial for the nation's overall goal in energy savings and slashing emissions," says Song Zhiping, chairman of China National Building Material Group. "Upgrading the manufacturing technology is the key".
Killing the kilns
As dynamite blasts roared one after another, nine large vertical cement kilns were blown down in Zaozhuang, Shandong province on November 7, in an effort to eliminate outdated and heavy-pollution cement manufacturing facilities.
"It pains a little in my heart to see our company's plants collapse within a second, since thousands of our employees had been living in those factories," says Cui Xingtai, president of China United Cement Group Co, a cement production unit of CNBM.
"But as a State-owned enterprise we should be a role model in energy saving and eliminating outdated capacity even though it causes profit losses," says Cui.
To date China United Cement Group has eliminated more than 30 energy-inefficient vertical cement kilns with total capacities of 3 million tons.
"The cement industry is one of the priorities in China's mid- and long-term energy saving plan. CNBM is striving to serve as a role model mobilizing more efforts to save energy and for environmental protection in the industry," says Song Zhiping.
In 2007, CNBM's energy consumption of per unit of industrial added value dropped 10 percent.
China is the world's biggest cement consumer, using more than 43 percent of the world's total output. In 2007, China produced 1.36 billion tons of cement.
But numerous cement companies in the nation still use outdated technology, resulting in significant energy waste and pollution.
The government and the China United Cement Group have pledged to improve energy efficiency by eliminating vertical kilns and promoting more advanced technologies using rotary kilns.
The China United Cement Group has also introduced advanced energy efficient dry-kiln cement production lines which can use waste heat to generate electricity.
Compared to the old vertical cement lines, a dry kiln cement plant can, on average, save electricity by 35 percent, increase the comprehensive resources consumption by 10 percent and reduce dust emission by 30 percent.
Waste heat recovery power generation systems are also
