The conveyor saves 200 yuan ($32) in transportation costs per ton of coal for the Tashan plant and greatly reduces pollution. The coal washery is made up of dozens of big cylinder tanks of three-story building height.

The clean coal is transported by rail to Qinhuangdao harbor 500 km away at Bohai Bay. Some leftovers are sent by conveyor to the furnace to make power for Tashan, and some are delivered to the coal chemical factory to produce methyl alcohol. Coal gangues, the waste with little commercial value, is used to make bricks.

Coal industry digs for solutions

Coal hub considered for North China

The huge amounts of kaolinite rock dug out with the coal in Tashan are processed, ground, dried, roasted and modified to make paper, cosmetics, porcelain and medicines.

The coal ash from the furnace in Tashan is used to make cement. The waste residues of the cement factory enter the kiln to make construction materials.

The industrial wastewater discharged from the mines and the workers' sewage are processed and purified for use in the thermal power plant.

The washery's wastewater goes through sedimentation treatment. Some is reused, some goes as storage water for fire fighting and some to mining.

All 13 projects are seamlessly connected in Tashan park, to squeeze the last drop of oil" from the "black gold", as required by Tongmei's corporate principles.

The Tashan park will reach full capacity by end-2015 when it will be able to process 50,000 tons of kaolinite rock, 2 million tons of cement, 4 million cubic meters of bricks, 600,000 tons of methyl alcohol and 4,000 tons of waste water each day.

Power generation, a key link in the chain, is a new field for Tongmei.

It cooperated with Datang International Power Generation Co Ltd, and began building the Tashan plant in 2005. Operations began three years later.

"We learned a lot about the management and operation of a power generation enterprise from the cooperation," said Du Jingdong, a workshop director of Tashan power plant.