Abstract
Treatment of sharp medical waste (waste disposable syringes) produced in hospitals or health care facilities in an environmentally sound ways have raised concerns relating to public health and occupational safety. Life cycle assessment (LCA ) is a decision-supporting tool in waste management practice; but relatively little research has been done on the evaluation of sharp medical waste treatment from a life cycle perspective. Our study assesses the environmental performances of medical waste incineration as a type of dominant technology for specific medical waste of average composition. Inventory models were used for waste incineration and residues landfill. Background data were derived from modelling performed in HSC Chemistry thermochemical package linked with GaBi environmental assessment tool. Two scenarios have been considered and compared: Waste disposable syringes partially replacing coke in Electric Arc Furnace (EAF ) steelmaking (WSI) and conventional incineration with pure metallurgical coke without adding waste syringes (CI). The results of this study could support the medical waste hierarchy and indicate that from a life cycle perspective, replacing part of metallurgical coke with waste syringes in electric arc furnace steelmaking leads to fairly significant reduce in most of environmental impact categories.
Original language | English |
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Title of host publication | Energy Technology 2017: Carbon Dioxide Management and Other Technologies |
Editors | Lei Zhang, Jaroslaw W. Drelich, Shadia Ikhmayies, Elsa Olivetti, Mark William Kennedy, Neale R. Neelameggham, Donna Post Guillen, Nawshad Haque, Jingxi Zhu, Ziqi Sun, Tao Wang, John A. Howarter, Fiseha Tesfaye |
Place of Publication | Switzerland |
Publisher | Springer |
Pages | 131-143 |
Number of pages | 13 |
ISBN (Electronic) | 9783319521923 |
ISBN (Print) | 9783319521916 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2017 |
Keywords
- environmental impact analysis
- incineration
- medical waste disposal
- medical wastes
- syringes