Background The extensive use and production of PPE, and disposal in the COVID-19 pandemic increases the plastic wastes arise environmental threats. Roughly, 129 billion face masks and 65 billion plastic gloves every month are used and disposed of on the globe. The study aims to identify the polymer type of face masks and gloves and sustainable plastic waste management options. Results The identification of polymers, which can help for fuel conversion alternatives, was confirmed by FTIR and TGA/DTA analysis and confirms that the polymeric categories fit for the intended purpose. Moreover, the handling technique for upcycling and the environmental impacts of the medical face mask and glove were discussed. The FTIR result revealed that face masks and gloves are polypropylene and PVC thermoplastic polymer, respectively and they can be easily transformed to fuel energy via pyrolysis. The endothermic peaks around 431 ℃ for medical glove and 175 ℃ for surgical is observed tells that the melting point of the PVC and polypropylene of plastic polymers, respectively. The pyrolysis of the face mask and glove was carried out in a closed reactor at 400 ℃ for 1 h. Conferring to lab-scale processes, liquid, and wax fuel rate of 75%, char of 10%, and the rest non-condensable gases were estimated at the end. Conclusions It can be concluded that the medical plastics can be recycled into oil due to their thermoplastics nature having high oil content and the waste to energy conversion can potentially reduce the volume of PPE plastic wastes.

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Background:Many rural households in Ethiopia use traditional three-stone stove which has low energy efficiency and incurs indoor air pollution. Despite the fact that improved cook stoves design variability was seen between producers appears, they have received little or no promotion work to improvements over open fire stoves. The aim of this research work is manufacturing and experimentally testing of rocket stove to make sure that the new design provides a major improvement within the prevailing cooking practices.Method:The rocket stove was developed as per the Aprovecho Research Center (USA) design principle the article focused on investigating the thermal performance, the specific fuel and emission reduction potential of rocket stove as compared to the three-stone stove so as to confirm the duplicability. Water boiling test were conducted to investigate the performance of developed rocket stove and emission characteristics were investigated using portable Indoor Air Pollution (IAP) monitoring device. The parameters and protocols were adjusted as per the Aprovecho design principles.Results:The result revealed that the rocket stove has 29% thermal efficiency, 43% reduction in specific fuel consumption, 42% CO and 81% PM2.5 emission reduction as compared to the well-known utilized traditional three-stone stove in Ethiopia. The experiment revealed that, the rocket stove average emission is 1.8 µg/m3 CO and 10 µg/m3 PM2.5 respectively. The emissions characteristic of our stove satisfies the WHO indoor air quality standard.Conclusion:It can be concluded that the prototype rocket stove has a substantial improvement over the three-stone stove with regards to thermal efficiency, CO and PM2.5 emissions. Furthermore, the stove can be manufactured locally within required thermal efficiency and emission levels. Therefore, shifting to rocket stoves could reduce pressure on forests and mitigate indoor pollutants emission.