Taiyuan details plan to ‘make skies blue again’

SHANGHAI, Sep 5 (SMM) – Taiyuan city in Shanxi province on Tuesday September 5 announced detailed plans for "making skies blue again", in response to the central government’s initiatives for fighting air pollution across China.

The city aims to lower the concentrations of particulate matter (PM10) and nitrogen dioxide, to upgrade emission processes across industrial enterprises and to control exhaust and dust emissions from vehicles.

Plants in the coke and cement sectors are required to cut production in turns to reduce the emission of pollutants.

A production cut of 20% was imposed on the spray coating process across various sectors.

Taiyuan Iron and Steel will have to upgrade its coke plant to meet ultra-low emission standards, by the end of September, and to ship coal by rail by the end of the year.

SMM learned that the steelmaker has begun overhauling the emission process at its coke plant and that this is likely to have minimal impact on its production.

Some 10,000-20,000 mt of output at the company was affected in August as the company undertook 11 days of maintenance on its 1,549 mm rolling line. Production has returned to normal.

The company plans to produce 270,000 mt of hot-rolled coil in September, up 20,000 mt from its realised output in August.