Comparison of incineration and autoclave methods in the treatment of medical wastes through life cycle assessment: A case study for Istanbul

Year 2021, , 157 - 164, 30.06.2021

Özge Kılıç Sadullah Levent Kuzu

https://doi.org/10.35208/ert.913039

Cited By: 1

Abstract

Medical waste management has always been an important topic due to its infectious status. Recently, more care has been given to it due to the COVID-19 pandemic throughout the world. Several methods are applied to handle medical wastes. Incineration and sterilization with autoclave are among the most common medical waste treatment methods. Among all methods, incineration serves the ultimate method of waste destruction since the waste is exposed to high temperatures (~800 °C) for about 2 hours. Because of the pandemic or some other reasons, administrations may want to shift their technology to incineration from autoclave. Therefore, in this study, we aimed to prepare a comparison of both technologies in terms of life cycle perspective. We used OpenLCA for calculations. Two different calculations were conducted. In the first one, the actual treatment methods and the waste amount were used. In the second one, a scenario was formed that included the treatment of the whole medical waste of Istanbul by only incineration process. The results indicated a higher mid-category life cycle impact for the combustion method. The highest contribution was for human toxicity with 3.8e4 kg 1,4-DB eq and 1.7e5 kg 1,4-DB eq for the current operation and scenario, respectively. The environmental impact of the sterilization process remained negligible relative to the combustion process.

Keywords

Medical waste, life cycle assessment, incineration, autoclave, OpenLCA

References

• Referans1 M. Ali, W. Wang, and N. Chaudhry, “Application of life cycle assessment for hospital solid waste management: A case study,” J. Air Waste Manage. Assoc., vol. 66, no. 10, pp. 1012–1018, Oct. 2016, doi: 10.1080/10962247.2016.1196263.
• Referans2 M. Ali, W. Wang, N. Chaudhry, and Y. Geng, “Hospital waste management in developing countries: A mini review,” Waste Manag. Res. J. a Sustain. Circ. Econ., vol. 35, no. 6, pp. 581–592, Jun. 2017, doi: 10.1177/0734242X17691344.
• Referans3 M. KARAOSMAN, “ANALYZING OF SOLID WASTE MANAGEMENT WITH LIFE CYCLE ASSESSMENT (LCA),” FATİH UNIVERSITY, 2014.
• Referans4 M. Banar, Z. Cokaygil, and A. Ozkan, “Life cycle assessment of solid waste management options for Eskisehir, Turkey,” Waste Manag., vol. 29, no. 1, pp. 54–62, Jan. 2009, doi: 10.1016/j.wasman.2007.12.006.
• Referans5 A. Y. Çetinkaya, L. Bilgili, and S. Levent Kuzu, “Life cycle assessment and greenhouse gas emission evaluation from aksaray solid waste disposal facility,” Air Qual. Atmos. Heal., vol. 11, no. 5, pp. 549–558, 2018, doi: 10.1007/s11869-018-0559-3.
• Referans6 O. Alam and A. Mosharraf, “A preliminary life cycle assessment on healthcare waste management in Chittagong City, Bangladesh,” Int. J. Environ. Sci. Technol., vol. 17, no. 3, pp. 1753–1764, Mar. 2020, doi: 10.1007/s13762-019-02585-z.
• Referans7 OpenLCA Comprehensive User Manual, Greendelta, 2020.
• Referans8 A. Laca, M. Herrero, and M. Díaz, “Life Cycle Assessment in Biotechnology,” in Comprehensive Biotechnology, Elsevier, 2011, pp. 839–851.
• Referans9 M. Z. Hauschild, R. K. Rosenbaum, and S. I. Olsen, Life Cycle Assessment. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2018.
• Referans10 A. Elwan, Y. Z. Arief, Z. Adzis, and N. A. Muhamad, “Life Cycle Assessment-based Environmental Impact Comparative Analysis of Composting and Electricity Generation from Solid Waste,” Energy Procedia, vol. 68, pp. 186–194, Apr. 2015, doi: 10.1016/j.egypro.2015.03.247.
• Referans11 H. Taghipour and M. Mosaferi, “Characterization of medical waste from hospitals in Tabriz, Iran,” Sci. Total Environ., vol. 407, no. 5, pp. 1527–1535, Feb. 2009, doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2008.11.032.
• Referans12 G. Gunes, A. Saral, Ş. Yildiz, and S. L. Kuzu, “Determination of optimum dose of adsorbent for PCDD/F removal in the flue gas of a medical waste incineration plant,” Chem. Eng. Res. Des., vol. 104, pp. 695–702, 2015, doi: 10.1016/j.cherd.2015.10.010.