Xin Xing, Javid Faisal, Anderson William A, Derraik José G B, Sullivan Trudy, Anderson Yvonne C, Baroutian Saeid
Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering, The University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand.
Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Canada.
Process Saf Environ Prot. 2022 Oct;166:565-573. doi: 10.1016/j.psep.2022.08.060. Epub 2022 Aug 27.
Increased demand for single-use personal protective equipment (PPE) during the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in a marked increase in the amount of PPE waste and associated environmental pollution. Developing efficient and environmentally safe technologies to manage and dispose of this PPE waste stream is imperative. We designed and evaluated a hydrothermal deconstruction technology to reduce PPE waste by up to 99% in weight. Hydrothermal deconstruction of single-use PPE waste was modelled using experimental data in Aspen Plus. Techno-economic and sensitivity analyses were conducted, and the results showed that plant scale, plant lifetime, discount rate, and labour costs were the key factors affecting overall processing costs. For a 200 kg/batch plant under optimal conditions, the cost of processing PPE waste was found to be 10 NZD/kg (6 USD/kg), which is comparable to the conventional practice of autoclaving followed by landfilling. The potential environmental impacts of this process were found to be negligible; meanwhile, this practice significantly reduced the use of limited landfill space.
在新冠疫情期间，对一次性个人防护装备（PPE）的需求增加，导致PPE废弃物数量显著增加以及相关的环境污染。开发高效且环境安全的技术来管理和处置这些PPE废物流势在必行。我们设计并评估了一种水热解构技术，可将PPE废弃物重量减少多达99%。使用Aspen Plus中的实验数据对一次性PPE废弃物的水热解构进行了建模。进行了技术经济和敏感性分析，结果表明工厂规模、工厂寿命、贴现率和劳动力成本是影响总体加工成本的关键因素。对于在最佳条件下每批处理200千克的工厂，处理PPE废弃物的成本为每千克10新西兰元（6美元/千克），这与传统的先高压灭菌后填埋的做法相当。发现该过程对环境的潜在影响可忽略不计；与此同时，这种做法显著减少了对有限填埋空间的使用。
