Hefei's "China Environment Valley" Fluoride Wastewater Treatment and Resource Recovery Project Selected into China's First National List of Landmark Major Application Scenarios

On October 20, China's National Development and Reform Commission released the first national-level list of landmark major application scenarios, with 136 projects selected nationwide. Anhui Province had 6 projects on the list and the provincial capital Hefei accounted for 5 of them. The fluoride wastewater treatment project located in Hefei's Shushan Economic Development Zone — home to the "China Environment Valley" cluster — was the province's only selected project in the ecological and environmental protection domain.

Fluoride-containing wastewater comes mainly from semiconductor, new display, photovoltaic and new energy battery manufacturing, where hydrofluoric acid and other fluorine-bearing chemicals are widely used for etching and cleaning. The resulting high-concentration fluoride wastewater threatens ecosystems and human health, and China enforces strict discharge limits for fluoride. As Hefei's new display, integrated circuit, PV and battery industries expand rapidly, fluoride wastewater treatment together with fluorine resource recovery has become an unavoidable prerequisite for green, low-carbon industrial development.

• Lead organization: Hefei Institutes of Physical Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, jointly with the Environmental Research Institute of Hefei Comprehensive National Science Center and other research institutes.
• Core tasks: precise treatment of fluoride wastewater and recovery of fluorine resources.
• Industrial partners: Hefei Construction Investment Holding Group, Anhui Shufeng Environmental Technology, Anhui Academy of Environmental Science and Technology and other downstream promotion entities.
• Goal: build a replicable, regionally scalable system solution for the green transition of fluorine-related industries.

The Environmental Research Institute of Hefei Comprehensive National Science Center acts as the innovation hub, linking frontier research resources with frontline engineering problems in industrial parks and running through the full chain of technology R&D, system integration, standard development and commercialization — moving results from the laboratory to real-world deployment.

According to the report, the landmark major application scenario program is a national "test field plus demonstration plot" that opens up real industrial demand so that new technologies and products can be validated at scale. The Hefei Ecology and Environment Bureau said it will strengthen coordination, factor support and project tracking to accelerate implementation on the ground.