At ten o'clock in the morning of May 21, a tanker truck slowly drove into a grain and oil company in Yanjiao, Hebei Province. An hour later, the tanker truck was loaded with more than 30 tons of soybean oil and left the factory.
What is little known is that this tanker truck full of edible soybean oil just transported a truckload of coal-to-oil from Ningxia to Qinhuangdao in Hebei Province three days ago.
Coal-to-liquid, which is a chemical liquid processed from coal, such as liquid wax, white oil, etc. A tanker driver revealed to a reporter from the Beijing News that it is an open secret in the tanker transportation industry that food liquids and chemical liquids are mixed and not cleaned.
In May this year, the Beijing News reporter conducted a long-term follow-up investigation and found that many domestic general cargo tankers transported liquids were not fixed, not only to undertake edible liquids such as syrup and soybean oil, but also to transport chemical liquids such as coal-to-liquid. In order to save costs, many tankers do not clean the tank during the exchange and transportation, and some edible oil manufacturers do not strictly check whether the tank is clean according to the regulations, resulting in the edible oil being polluted by residual chemical liquid.
In fact, at present, there is no mandatory national standard for the transportation of edible oil in the mainland, and there is only a recommended "Specification for Bulk Transportation of Edible Vegetable Oil", which mentions that special vehicles should be used for the transportation of bulk edible vegetable oil. Since it is a recommended national standard, it means that it is binding on manufacturers.
Professor Wang Xingguo of the School of Food Science and Technology of Jiangnan University told reporters that although the current transportation specifications are recommended national standards, they also have a certain degree of mandatory. He pointed out that "it is also a national standard, and relevant enterprises should use this as the basis when formulating enterprise standards, and enterprise standards can be stricter than this standard, and generally cannot be lower than this standard." ”
"Mixed and not cleaned, the residue will inevitably cause a certain amount of pollution to the edible oil, and the transportation of edible oil should be dedicated to special vehicles." Zhu Yi, an associate professor at the College of Food Science at China Agricultural University, told the Beijing News that coal-to-liquid is mainly hydrocarbons, and the unsaturated hydrocarbons, aromatic hydrocarbons, sulfides and other components contained in it affect human health and may lead to poisoning.
Tanker mixing: Edible oil mixed with chemical liquids
Many tankers are piled up in the parking lot of Ningdong Energy and Chemical Base, waiting to be loaded and shipped.
The base is located in Lingwu City, Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, with the largest coal-to-liquid project in the mainland, covering an area of thousands of acres of coal-to-liquids plant area, jet-black coal through a number of high temperature and high pressure and other complex processes, can achieve "coal into oil", the production of liquid wax, white oil and other products.
According to public information, the "coal-to-liquid" project, which belongs to Ningxia Coal Industry, currently has an annual production capacity of 4 million tons, ranking first in the country. Most of the coal-to-liquid produced here is transported to economically developed areas such as the eastern seaboard, where it can be used as a raw material for chemical products or as a fuel.
A tanker driver told reporters that tankers are generally divided into hazardous chemicals tankers and general cargo tankers, hazardous chemicals tankers generally transport gasoline, diesel and other flammable and explosive liquids, and general cargo tankers as the name suggests is to transport ordinary liquids other than hazardous chemicals, "coal-to-liquid products, such as liquid wax, white oil, they can not be lit by open flame (can be burned after gasification with special stoves), do not belong to hazardous chemicals, general cargo tankers can be transported." ”
In mid-May this year, the reporter saw around the Ningxia Coal Industry Coal-to-Liquids Plant that various types of tankers were parked on both sides of the road, including general cargo tankers transporting coal-to-liquid, and the outside of the tanks of these tankers were sprayed with information such as volume and medium, and a tanker driver explained that the medium usually refers to the material transported by the tanker, and the medium is generally marked as "ordinary liquid" when transporting coal-to-liquid.
In the logistics center of Ningmei Coal-to-Liquids Branch, there is an endless stream of tankers driving into here every day, ready to load coal-to-liquids. Photo by Beijing News reporter Han Futao
"It's the off-season, there are still few tankers, and more than 100 can be parked in this parking lot in the peak season." A tanker driver who was resting in the parking lot told reporters that most of these tankers are usually parked nearby, and once they receive a transportation order, they will enter the factory to queue up to load oil, and then transport the coal-to-liquid to the destination according to the buyer's demand. ”
On May 16, a tanker truck with the license plate number Ji E**65Z departed from the Ningdong coal-to-liquid plant area and arrived in Qinhuangdao City, Hebei Province, more than 1,000 kilometers away, two days later. The tanker drove into a small courtyard on the outskirts of the city and drove out more than an hour later. The Beijing News reporter noticed that the tanker did not leave immediately, but stopped on the side of the road nearby, and the driver also opened the door to rest in the car.
The Beijing News reporter talked to the driver under the pretense of consulting the market, and the driver revealed that he was transporting coal-to-liquid from Ningxia to Qinhuangdao this time, and he had just finished unloading the goods in the small courtyard. The driver told reporters that the tanker belongs to a convoy, he is a full-time driver, and there are more than a dozen tankers in the convoy. ”
Since then, Beijing News reporters have been observing the movements of the tanker truck nearby. On the afternoon of May 20, the tanker truck restarted, drove to Yanjiao Town, Sanhe City, Hebei Province in the evening, and drove into the parking lot of a grain and oil company.
At 10 o'clock in the morning of the next day, the tanker truck successfully drove into the production plant of Huifu Grain and Oil Group. Until this time, the tanker had not washed the tanks since the coal-to-liquid was unloaded. An hour later, the tanker truck left the factory with a full load of goods. According to the transport documents kept by the factory guard, the tanker entered the factory to load first-grade soybean oil, and the net weight of the cargo was 31.86 tons.
On May 24, in a parking lot in Tianjin Binhai New Area, a tanker truck with a license plate number of Ji E**76W was also waiting to transport edible oil. While waiting, the reporter learned from the tanker driver that the tanker had also just transported coal-to-liquid from Ningxia to Hebei, and after unloading coal-to-liquid in Shijiazhuang the day before, it rushed to Tianjin from Shijiazhuang overnight. The driver revealed that since the unloading of coal-to-liquid, the tanker has not washed the tank, and the driver does not care about whether he will be worried about being rejected by the edible oil manufacturer.
In the afternoon of the same day, a reporter from the Beijing News saw the tanker drive into a factory called China Grain Storage Oil (Tianjin) Co., Ltd. According to the security guard of the factory, including this tanker, the soybean oil is loaded into the factory. Due to the short distance, the reporter can clearly see the whole process of tanker loading outside the factory, and the tanker has not encountered any obstacles from beginning to end, and no one has checked whether the tank is clean or not. After about forty minutes, the tanker was full of oil, and the weighbridge in the factory area showed that the tanker was loaded with 35 tons of soybean oil.
This means that the tanker, which has just finished unloading coal-to-liquid, has also been successfully loaded with cooking oil without washing the tank.
On May 21, a tanker truck that had unloaded coal-to-liquids entered a grain and oil company to load soybean oil without washing the tanks. Photo by Beijing News reporter Han Futao
Cost savings: Mixing without cleaning is becoming the norm
The reason why most of the tankers that transport coal-to-liquid to coastal areas are edible oil is mainly because there are many manufacturers producing edible oil here.
During the interview, the reporter learned that at present, the manufacturers of edible oil in the mainland are mainly concentrated in the coastal areas. Taking soybean oil as an example, it is generally necessary to rely on ocean-going cargo ships to import soybeans from abroad, and the factories that produce soybean oil are usually located around the port, and Tianjin Binhai New Area has gathered a number of edible oil manufacturers.
An edible oil industry insider told the Beijing News reporter that edible oil is not all common small packaging when leaving the factory, and many are sold in the form of bulk oil, "some edible oil manufacturers located near the port, do not do terminal retail, they will sell edible oil to other manufacturers, and other manufacturers will be filled into small packages for external sales, and there will also be some food companies to purchase bulk edible oil as raw materials." ”
Edible oil manufacturers sell bulk oil to the outside world, and also rely on tanker trucks for transportation, and many transport vehicles come from Xingtai.
A number of industry insiders said that Nanhe District, Xingtai City, Hebei Province is a well-known "hometown of tankers" in the industry, and "Nanhe does more of this, with at least 3,000 tankers." This is consistent with the phenomenon observed by the reporter in many places, whether it is around the coal-to-liquid plant area in Ningxia or near some edible oil manufacturers, the number of tankers with license plate numbers starting with "Ji E (Xingtai, Hebei)" is the largest.
On May 14, a number of tankers were parked in a parking lot in Nanhe District, Xingtai City, Hebei Province, and many local people were engaged in the tanker transportation industry. Photo by Beijing News reporter Han Futao
A number of local tanker drivers in Nanhe said that at first, the local tankers only transported edible oil, and later began to transport other liquid cargo, and in recent years, many tankers have begun to go to Ningxia to pull coal-to-liquid.
"In the past, the tanker trucks transporting edible oil generally returned empty, taking Tianjin to Xi'an as an example, the earliest one-way freight quotation was more than 400 yuan per ton, and now it has dropped to about 200 yuan." A tanker driver told reporters that due to the increase in tankers in the past two years, the competition has intensified, and the price of tanker transportation has also dropped a lot, which forces many tankers to find a way to distribute goods on the return trip. ”
At the same time, in the context of the gradual reduction of freight, the tankers transporting edible oil not only cannot be used for special vehicles, but many tankers do not even clean the tanks in order to save costs. "The cost of a single can washing is as little as three or five hundred, and as much as eight or nine hundred." A tanker driver revealed that because the general cargo tankers often change the transportation, each time the tank is also a large expense, so many tankers choose to save when changing the transportation.
In the investigation, the Beijing News reporter learned that the vast majority of tankers are affiliated with the fleet, the large fleet has hundreds of tankers, the small-scale fleet has only a few tankers, and the proportion of individual tankers is very small, and for the tankers belonging to the fleet, some drivers told reporters that although their drivers sometimes want to wash the tanks, they must also obey the arrangement of the team boss, "The boss let it clear, the boss does not let it clear, the boss's business." ”
Loose control: edible oil manufacturers inspect cans into a formality
In the view of many tanker drivers, the reason why the team owner does not arrange to wash the tank is more because some edible oil manufacturers are not strict, and they usually do not check whether the tank is clean. ”
In Xingtai, Hebei Province, a tanker driver said that because he often deals with various edible oil manufacturers, the team owner has long been aware of the inspection situation of each manufacturer. ”
At the beginning of June this year, a reporter from the Beijing News called Huifu Grain and Oil Group in the name of transporting edible oil, and a staff member said that they did not require special tankers for edible oil, but only required that the goods transported by the tankers for the first three times were also edible oil, "The tanks need to be kept clean and tidy, and workers will inspect the tanks before loading oil." However, a number of tanker drivers revealed that the grain and oil company is not strict when inspecting the tanks, "They usually look at the oil drain first and wipe it clean, and it is better if an acquaintance often comes to transport oil." "For the information that needs to be filled in with the previous goods on the manifest, the driver can also make it up at will.
On May 24, at the gate of an edible oil factory in Tianjin, a tanker driver was wiping down the oil unloading port to cope with the manufacturer's inspection. Photo by Beijing News reporter Han Futao
The reporter also called the grain storage oil (Tianjin) Co., Ltd., a sales manager said that in principle, the transportation of edible oil needs a special tanker, but then he added that as long as the tank has the words "edible oil special", "in fact, we do not inspect the tank, whether it is a special tanker for edible oil We can't tell." He stressed that the contract for the sale of edible oil stipulates that the buyer picks it up, and the tanker is also hired by the buyer, and they are not responsible for the quality of the edible oil after it is loaded into the car.
Another company that produces edible oil, also located in Tianjin's Binhai New Area, is not strict when it comes to canning inspections.
On May 24, a tanker driver waiting to enter the factory to load oil told reporters that the company's tank inspection is also a formality, and the driver only needs to upload a few photos, "I took photos of the oil drain port and tank mouth, and the tank body has the words 'edible oil'." He revealed that he can also cope with the past with the old photos stored in his phone, "You just find a few clean photos and give them a look, whether it is today's photos or not." ”
As for some edible oil manufacturers require the words "edible oil" to be sprayed on the outside of the tank, the driver said that it is also very easy to deal with, and only need to wipe off the words "ordinary liquid" marked on the tank before and spray the words edible oil again, "Now there is a varnish, and it is very convenient to change it." ”
In late May, the reporter observed at the door of this company that many tankers that entered the factory to transport edible oil have obvious traces of alteration on the medium information sprayed on the tanks, and some tankers just use stickers to cover the words "ordinary liquid", and then re-post a sticker with the words "edible oil".
Even the presence of such obvious traces of alteration did not affect the tankers transporting cooking oil.
A tanker waiting to enter the factory to load edible oil, the tank media information was covered by white paper, and a note with the word "edible oil" was reposted next to it. Photo by Beijing News reporter Han Futao
Transportation specifications: Bulk edible oil transportation should be dedicated to special vehicles
In fact, the "GB/T30354-2013 Specification for Bulk Transportation of Edible Vegetable Oil" (hereinafter referred to as the "Transportation Specification"), which was implemented by Continental in 2014, mentions that special vehicles should be used for the transportation of bulk edible vegetable oil, and non-edible vegetable oil tankers or containers should not be used for transportation. The "Transport Specification" also mentions that before loading grease, it is necessary to carefully check whether the transport container is a special container and whether the container is clean and dry.
However, the "Transportation Specification" is only a recommended national standard, not a mandatory national standard, and has limited binding force on edible oil manufacturers.
Professor Wang Xingguo of the School of Food Science and Technology of Jiangnan University told reporters that although the "Transportation Specification" is a recommended national standard, it is also mandatory. He pointed out that "it is also a national standard, and relevant enterprises should use this as the basis when formulating enterprise standards, and enterprise standards can be stricter than this standard, and generally cannot be lower than this standard." ”
As far as the transportation of bulk vegetable oil is concerned, Professor Wang Xingguo believes that relevant enterprises should refer to the "Transportation Specifications" and use special transport vehicles, otherwise there is a risk of contamination of edible oil during transportation.
On May 24, a tanker truck that had just finished unloading coal-to-liquid drove into China Grain and Oil (Tianjin) Co., Ltd., and the driver climbed onto the top of the tank and was preparing to load edible oil. Photo by Beijing News reporter Han Futao
Qiu Jian (pseudonym) is a tanker driver who has been in the industry for more than ten years, he told reporters that if the tank is not washed after unloading the coal-to-liquid, there will usually be a few thousand grams to more than ten kilograms of coal-to-liquid left in the tank. Qiu Jian said that in most cases, the residual coal-to-liquid will be mixed with edible oil, "like the white oil liquid wax in coal-to-liquid, which itself is colorless, the color is relatively transparent, and it is not easy to see." ”
He said that non-hazardous chemical liquids such as industrial wastewater, plasticizers, waste engine oil, and superplasticizers can be transported by general cargo tankers, and coal-to-liquid only belongs to the current relatively large category, "coal-to-liquid manufacturers in addition to Ningmei, there are several other manufacturers of chemical liquids, and they may share tanker transportation with edible oil manufacturers." ”
Qiu Jian told reporters that although the edible oil consignee will take samples for inspection when unloading, due to the limited inspection items, even if the edible oil is mixed with other impurities, the ordinary inspection can not be detected, "There are more water and acid value two items to be tested." ”
Qiu Jian believes that bulk edible oil is actually in a semi-detached state in the process of long-distance transportation, "the manufacturers who sell oil do not care much, and the companies that buy oil do not know, so that the transportation companies take advantage of the loopholes." Qiu Jian revealed that many transportation orders are generally subcontracted layer by layer, and the buyer and seller have no way of understanding the final tanker.
As a tanker driver, Qiu Jian is very helpless, and he calls for attention to such industry chaos, because edible oil is related to thousands of households. "Coal-to-liquid may be relatively clean, but some other uncommon chemical liquids may be even more harmful if they contaminate the cooking oil," he said. ”
In Qiu Jian's view, the transportation company is guided by the standards of edible oil manufacturers, and only needs the edible oil manufacturers to strictly control the occurrence of chaos in this industry, "edible oil manufacturers should be the most effective in carefully inspecting cans, which can solve 99% of the problems." ”
Zhu Yi, an associate professor at the College of Food Science and Technology of China Agricultural University, told reporters that coal-to-liquid is mainly hydrocarbons, which contain unsaturated hydrocarbons, aromatic hydrocarbons, sulfides and other components that pose health risks to the human body, and long-term consumption may lead to poisoning. ”
Zhu Yi believes that if the tanker transporting edible oil also transports other chemical liquids, the risk is even more unpredictable, "if you don't know what kind of pollutants are in the oil, it is impossible to prevent it, if the toxic chemical liquid remains in it, direct contact or inhalation may cause harm to the human body, such as organic solvents, acids, alkalis, heavy metals, etc., which may cause damage to the respiratory system and digestive system." ”
Beijing News reporter Han Futao intern Zhang Xinhui Hao Zhelin
Edited by Gan Hao
Proofread by Zhao Lin