A Novel Process Design for Waste Respirator Processing

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic increases the consumption of respirators. In this work, we propose a novel and effective waste respirator processing system that aims to protect public health and mitigate climate change. Respirator sterilization and pre-processing technologies are incorporated simultaneously to resist viral infection and facilitate unit processes for manufacturing and separating products, so the greenhouse gas (GHG) emission can be reduced via carbon reallocation from CO(2) to downstream products. High-fidelity process simulations are performed to extract detailed life cycle inventories used for evaluating environmental performance. Results reveal the economic viability in terms of the payback time (seven years) and the internal rate of return (21.5%). The proposed waste respirator processing system reduces GHG emissions by 59.08% compared to incineration, which reflects the potential of climate change mitigation.