Thermal decomposition study for effective management of low level radioactive combustible solids

Pancholi, Keyur C.; Mishra, R.; Kolay, Siddhartha; Singh, P.; Vincent, Tessy; Kaushik, C.P.

doi:10.1007/s10967-022-08210-7

Cited by 1 publication

(1 citation statement)

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“…Consequently, novel methods used in small and mobile medical waste devices, such as microwave heating and thermal (arc) plasma treatment techniques, have emerged in recent years (Mazzoni and Janajreh 2017 ; Samal 2017 ; Sanlisoy and Carpinlioglu 2017 ; Li et al 2020a , b ; Jie et al 2021a , b ; Li et al 2021 ; Bhatt et al 2022 ; Huang et al 2022 ; Pancholi et al 2022a ). Microwave heating is a green and environmentally friendly method and a substitute for traditional heating in batch treatments of various materials (Li et al 2021 ; Wang et al 2022 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

An atmospheric microwave plasma-based distributed system for medical waste treatment

Jie

Liu

Xia

et al. 2023

Environ Sci Pollut Res

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Inadequate handling of infectious medical waste may promote the spread of the virus through secondary transmission during the transfer process. Microwave plasma, an ease-of-use, device-compact, and pollution-free technology, enables the on-site disposal of medical waste, thereby preventing secondary transmission. We developed atmospheric-pressure air-based microwave plasma torches with lengths exceeding 30 cm to rapidly treat various medical wastes in situ with nonhazardous exhaust gas. The gas compositions and temperatures throughout the medical waste treatment process were monitored by gas analyzers and thermocouples in real time. The main organic elements in medical waste and their residues were analyzed by an organic elemental analyzer. The results showed that (i) the weight reduction ratio of medical waste achieved a maximum value of 94%; (ii) a water–waste ratio of 30% was beneficial for enhancing the microwave plasma treatment effect for medical wastes; and (iii) substantial treatment effectiveness was achievable under a high feeding temperature (≥ 600 °C) and a high gas flow rate (≥ 40 L/min). Based on these results, we built a miniaturized and distributed pilot prototype for microwave plasma torch-based on-site medical waste treatment. This innovation could fill the gap in the field of small-scale medical waste treatment facilities and alleviate the existing issue of handling medical waste on-site. Graphical abstract

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