Life cycle assessments of incineration treatment for sharp medical waste

Maryam Ghodrat, Maria Rashidi, Bijan Samali

Research output: Chapter in Book / Conference PaperChapter

23 Citations (Scopus)

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 languageEnglish
Title of host publicationEnergy Technology 2017: Carbon Dioxide Management and Other Technologies
EditorsLei 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 PublicationSwitzerland
PublisherSpringer
Pages131-143
Number of pages13
ISBN (Electronic)9783319521923
ISBN (Print)9783319521916
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2017

Keywords

  • environmental impact analysis
  • incineration
  • medical waste disposal
  • medical wastes
  • syringes

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