Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
has been a subject of concern in Japan in recent years, which makes agriculture an
important stakeholder for taking part in the reduction of phosphorus accumulated in
the soil, or for the development of innovative technologies to use phosphorus more
effectively.
In consideration of resource management with a focus on yellow phosphorus
however, the stakeholders would be practically all users of chemical industrial
products. Phosphoric acid is used in the refining of cooking oil and for pre-paint
surface treatment, and industries that use products which go through such processes
in the supply chain, could potentially become stakeholders. From the perspective of
resource dissipation, it is also evident that wastewater treatment, as well as iron and
steel industries, play equally important roles.
9.4.1.1
Implication for Economic Structure
Economic structure is discussed from the perspective of resource logistics. Japan,
which has no domestic phosphate ore deposits, relies on imports for all required
phosphorus resources. The only method available for reducing the resource depen-
dency on other countries is to recover and recycle unused phosphorus resources in
Japan. In order to improve the efficiency of recoveries and recycling, geographical
integration and physical concentration of resources are required. The paths in which
these can be implemented are from sewage sludge and incineration ash, which are
residues that remain after urban waste materials have been processed. Steel making
slag with concentrated phosphorus, a steel production resource, could also be used.
Since the waste material processing infrastructure is relatively well organized in the
economic structure of Japan, waste materials with a high potential for recovering
phosphorus have already been made available, and phosphorus recovered from such
products are used as sludge fertilizer raw materials. However, the amount recovered
has been limited to 10.2 kt-P, which is not even 10 % of the phosphorus contained in
the waste materials discharged from households. There is, therefore, a need to nur-
ture an industry that applies recovery technologies, and an industry that can effec-
tively utilize recovered phosphorus, for successful phosphorus resource recycling.
There is no doubt that the automotive industry is a key industry of Japan. There
is, however, no manufacturing base for yellow phosphorus, which comprises about
half of all required phosphorus in the supply chain. The production bases of yellow
phosphorus in Asia are located only in China and Vietnam, with practically the
whole supply dependent on these two countries. The production of yellow phos-
phorus has been completely scrapped by all domestic industries, due to the fact that
it is an industry with an intensive demand for electric power. In China, however, a
provision involving an imposition of 100 % export tariff on yellow phosphorus was
implemented in 2008 for the purpose of resource protection, environmental con-
servation and energy conservation in their pursuit for a domestic infrastructure that
provides a stable supply. It was suggested that since delays in the supply of yellow
phosphorus present significant effects throughout the supply chain, that industries
