Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Xin, Xing
• Javid, Faisal
• Anderson, William A.
• Derraik, José G.B.
• Sullivan, Trudy
• Anderson, Yvonne C.
• Baroutian, Saeid

Titel

Hydrothermal deconstruction of single-use personal protective equipment: process design and economic performance

Ist Teil von

• Process safety and environmental protection, 2022-10, Vol.166, p.565-573

Ort / Verlag

Institution of Chemical Engineers. Published by Elsevier Ltd

Erscheinungsjahr

2022

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

Alma/SFX Local Collection

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• 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.