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Life Cycle Assessments of Incineration Treatment for Sharp Medical Waste

  • Conference paper
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Energy Technology 2017

Part of the book series: The Minerals, Metals & Materials Series ((MMMS))

Abstract

Treatment of sharp medical waste (waste disposable syringes) produced in hospitals or health care facilities in an environmentally sound ways have raised concerns relating to public health and occupational safety. Life cycle assessment (LCA ) is a decision-supporting tool in waste management practice; but relatively little research has been done on the evaluation of sharp medical waste treatment from a life cycle perspective. Our study assesses the environmental performances of medical waste incineration as a type of dominant technology for specific medical waste of average composition. Inventory models were used for waste incineration and residues landfill. Background data were derived from modelling performed in HSC Chemistry thermochemical package linked with GaBi environmental assessment tool. Two scenarios have been considered and compared: Waste disposable syringes partially replacing coke in Electric Arc Furnace (EAF ) steelmaking (WSI) and conventional incineration with pure metallurgical coke without adding waste syringes (CI). The results of this study could support the medical waste hierarchy and indicate that from a life cycle perspective, replacing part of metallurgical coke with waste syringes in electric arc furnace steelmaking leads to fairly significant reduce in most of environmental impact categories.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Infrastructure Engineering, School of Computing, Engineering and Mathematics, Western Sydney University, Sydney, Australia

    Maryam Ghodrat, Maria Rashidi & Bijan Samali

Authors
  1. Maryam Ghodrat
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  2. Maria Rashidi
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  3. Bijan Samali
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Maryam Ghodrat .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Alaska System , Fairbanks, Alaska, USA

    Lei Zhang

  2. 512 Minerals & Matls Engg Bldg, Michigan Technological Univ 512 Minerals & Matls Engg Bldg, Houghton, Michigan, USA

    Jaroslaw W. Drelich

  3. IND LLC , South Jordan, Utah, USA

    Neale R. Neelameggham

  4. Idaho National Laboratory , Idaho Falls, Idaho, USA

    Donna Post Guillen

  5. CSIRO , Canberra, Australia

    Nawshad Haque

  6. Carnegie Mellon University , Pittsburgh, USA

    Jingxi Zhu

  7. Queensland University of Technology , Brisbane, Australia

    Ziqi Sun

  8. Nucor Steel , Manila, Arkansas, USA

    Tao Wang

  9. Purdue University , West Lafayette, Indiana, USA

    John A Howarter

  10. Turku, Finland

    Fiseha Tesfaye

  11. Department of Basic Sciences/Physic, Al Isra University Department of Basic Sciences/Physic, Amman, Jordan

    Shadia Ikhmayies

  12. Massachusetts Institute of Technology , Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA

    Elsa Olivetti

  13. Proval Partners SA , Lausanne, Switzerland

    Mark William Kennedy

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© 2017 The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society

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Ghodrat, M., Rashidi, M., Samali, B. (2017). Life Cycle Assessments of Incineration Treatment for Sharp Medical Waste. In: Zhang, L., et al. Energy Technology 2017. The Minerals, Metals & Materials Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-52192-3_14

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