Feasibility Assessment Of Cleaner Production Plans Based On Method Of Data Envelopment Analysis

Cement is a basic building material which is widely used in people’s livelihood as well as industrial construction. In China, cement industry has been developing rapidly with the accelerated development of social economics and urbanization. Up to2012, the cement output in China has reached2.184billion tons, accounting for nearly60%of world’s total output value. Cement manufacture is a typical industry with high energy consumption and heavy pollution emissions. Its fast development simultaneously causes severe problems in resources, energy and the environment. The relevant data shows that cement industry inland discharges nearly250tons of nitrogen oxides (NOx) in2012, making up for12%of the total emission. Cement industry has become one of the key industrial areas to reduce NOx in our country. Therefore, the implementation of cleaner production plans in cement industry is quite necessary, since it is an efficient way to reduce energy consumption and pollutant emissions. However, the currently-adopted methods for evaluation of cleaner production plans in China have certain shortcomings:the evaluation of technically feasible plans is divided into two parts, i.e., environmental and economical. For plans with unequal environmental and economical efficiencies, these methods cannot promote effective choices, which are unable to meet the demands of cleaner production audit. It becomes the purpose of this paper to effectively solve the above problem by introducing Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) model in cleaner production plans evaluation. The main contents of this dissertation are as follows:(1) Establishment of the index system of DEA model for the evaluation of denitration plans in cement industry. In cleaner production audit of cement industry,8alternative cleaner production plans were generated to reduce nitrogen oxides emission. Based on the principles of index selection and the characteristics of denitration plans, six major environment and economic indicators of denitration plan were selected, including total investment, reductant consumption, operating expense, additional energy consumption, ammonia escape and NOx emission reductions, to build the index system of DEA model.(2) Construction of an extended DEA model. Based on the modeling theory of DEA, an extended DEA model for the evaluation of denitration cleaner production plans in cement industry was constructed, taking the secondary pollutant NH3introduced by denitration plans as a undesirable output and the NOx emission reduction as an expected output.(3) Feasibility assessment of the denitration plans in cement industry based on the extended DEA model.8alternative cleaner production plans (S1-S8) generated in the process of cement industry cleaner production audit was evaluated using the extend DEA model. In this research, since the index system covers main environmental and economical indicators of the denitration plan, the evaluation results of DEA model effectively reflect environment and economic benefits of each plan. The best denitration plan was thus selected out based on the evaluation results, along with comprehensive consideration of the environmental carrying capacity, pollutant emission standards, and current emissions and economical affordabilities of the enterprise.The results demonstrate that DEA is an effective method to evaluate the cleaner production plans. To some extent, the evaluation results provide a technical support for cleaner production plans evaluation and selection. In conclusion, DEA model is of great practical value and practical significance in the evaluation and selection of cleaner production plans.