The standard was formulated for the purpose of implementing Environmental Protection Law of the People’s Republic of China and Law of People’s Republic of China on the Promotion of Clean Production, protecting the environment and providing technical support and guidance for soda ash enterprises. The standard set requirements for soda ash enterprises on clean production according to current technical and equipment capacity and management level of the industry and on condition that these enterprises meet national and local standard for pollution discharge. The standard has three levels. Level I represents advanced international level for clean production, level II stands for advanced domestic level and level III refers to basic domestic level of clean production. The standard is subject to timely revision along with continued technical progress and development. The standard is applicable to soda ash enterprises as general requirement for clean production. The standard classifies clean production standard of soda ash industry into five categories, namely requirement on equipment, indices for resource and energy utilization, indices for pollution generation (before end-of-pipe treatment), indices for waste recovery and reuse and requirement on environmental management. The standard applies to clean production auditing of soda ash production with ammonia-soda process and Hou’s process. It also applies to judgement of clean production potential and opportunity, assessment and notification of its performance and environmental management such as environmental impact assessment and pollution discharge permit, etc. The standard does not apply to plants engaged in synthetic ammonia and thermal power, or downstream products such as baking soda and calcium chloride. This is the first issuance of the standard.
