A circular economy park is being created covering giant steel and petrochemical complexes, which are 500 meters away and being built on Donghai Island, as Zhanjiang's government pledges to conserve the city's environment.

When the steel project was approved in 2012, the National Development and Reform Commission said a circular economy must be created in the area and cooperation with the petrochemical project should be strengthened during the process.

A committee was set up by the city government and the operators of both the projects to build a State-level circular economy demonstration zone.

The project operators reached consensus in aspects including hydrogen production from coke oven gas, air separation, railway usage, circulating fluidized bed boiler slag, natural gas, towing vessel and waste lubricant treatment.

The steel project in Zhanjiang is an example of economic structural adjustment, industrial upgrading and innovation-driven development, said Xu Kuangdi, former president of the China Academy of Engineering (CAE), at a conference in Beijing in August.

He expressed the hope that the steel project would position itself as a producer of environmental and premium steel products, explore a new path to build a circular economy and recycle emissions from the heavy chemical industry.

The development on Donghai Island is a major breakthrough in circular economy in the country, said Xu Delong, vice-president of CAE.

The slag from the steel plant can be processed into cement capable of resisting seawater erosion and coal ash from the power plant can be used for making building materials, he added.

Gan Yong, former vice-president of CAE, suggested that a joint working group at a higher level should be established for industrial transformation, innovation, energy-saving and emission reduction for the circular economy in Zhanjiang.

He also suggested cooperation between the two projects and information technology giants in the country to jointly build industrial Internet and Internet of Things so that key systems and projects in the circular economy could be connected and included in the building of a smart city.

This way, flows of energy, information, values and logistics will develop in a coordinated way, Gan said.

Hydrogen produced by the coke oven gas, which was wasted in the past, can be used by refineries and the two projects in Zhanjiang can realize reasonable distribution of the energy, said Yin Ruiyu, an academician with CAE.