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Plasma gasification of the medical waste

In terms of infection control in hospitals, especially the Covid-19 pandemic that we are living in, it has revealed the necessity of proper disposal of medical waste. The increasing amount of medical waste with the pandemic is straining the capacity of incineration facilities or storage areas. Conve...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Erdogan, Altug Alp, Yilmazoglu, Mustafa Zeki
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Hydrogen Energy Publications LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8021435/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33840883
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhydene.2020.12.069
Descripción
Sumario:In terms of infection control in hospitals, especially the Covid-19 pandemic that we are living in, it has revealed the necessity of proper disposal of medical waste. The increasing amount of medical waste with the pandemic is straining the capacity of incineration facilities or storage areas. Converting this waste to energy with gasification technologies instead of incineration is also important for sustainability. This study investigates the gasification characteristics of the medical waste in a novel updraft plasma gasifier with numerical simulations in the presence of the plasma reactions. Three different medical waste samples, chosen according to the carbon content and five different equivalence ratios (ER) ranging from 0.1 to 0.5 are considered in the simulations to compare the effects of different chemical compositions and waste feeding rates on hydrogen (H(2)) content and syngas production. The outlet properties of a 10 kW microwave air plasma generator are used to define the plasma inlet in the numerical model and the air flow rate is held constant for all cases. Results showed that the maximum H(2) production can be obtained with ER = 0.1 for all waste samples.