Investigation of novel incineration technology for hospital waste

Conventional incineration systems for hospital waste (HW) emit large amounts of particulate matter (PM) and heavy metals, as well as dioxins, due to the large excess air ratio. Additionally, the final process residues--bottom and fly ashes containing high levels of heavy metals and dioxins--also constitute a serious environmental problem. These issues faced by HW incineration processes are very similar to those confronted by conventional municipal solid waste (MSW) incinerators. In our previous work, we developed a novel technology integrating drying, pyrolysis, gasification, combustion, and ash vitrification (DPGCV) in one step, which successfully solved these issues in MSW incineration. In this study, many experiments are carried out to investigate the feasibility of employing the DPGCV technology to solve the issues faced by HW incineration processes, although there was no MSW incinerator used as a HW incinerator till now. Experiments were conducted in an industrial HW incineration plant with a capacity of 24 tons per day (TPD), located in Zhenzhou, Henan Province. Results illustrated that this DPGCV technology successfully solved these issues as confronted by the conventional HW incinerators and achieved the expected results for HW incineration as it did for MSW incineration. The outstanding performance of this DPGCV technology is due to the fact that the primary chamber acted as both gasifier for organic matter and vitrifying reactor for ashes, and the secondary chamber acted as a gas combustor.