Recycling-equilibrium strategy for phosphogypsum pollution control in phosphate fertilizer plants

Abstract

Excessive phosphogypsum waste has caused significant environmental contamination and has consequently become a serious threat to sustainable socio-economic development. This paper proposes a recycling-equilibrium strategy from a regional policy perspective that integrates circular economic theory and modeling techniques to resolve phosphogypsum-related pollution problems. Specifically, three typical conflicts are analyzed to describe the problem complexity, and a multi-objective bi-level programming model is formulated under uncertainty for the assignment of practical disposal limits to achieve a compromise agreement between the multiple decision makers. A solution approach that employs fuzzy theory, an acceptable reduction target, and Karush-Kuhn-Tucker conditions is developed to identify the optimum phosphogypsum stack allowance allocation mechanism for regional authorities and an optimal purchase-transportation plan for the phosphate fertilizer plants. The results from the practical case validated the feasibility and efficiency of the formulated method and proved that a recycling-equilibrium strategy based stack allowance allocation mechanism could successfully achieve phosphogypsum pollution mitigation. The practical application findings were: (1) different phosphate fertilizer plants have different sensitivities towards changing stack reduction targets; (2) local authority revenue and phosphogypsum stack quantities are mainly impacted by environmental protection targets; (3) allocating larger stack allowances to phosphate fertilizer plants with smaller emissions coefficients can realize better phosphogypsum reduction.