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Proper waste management is crucial to ensure a healthy and clean environment. This is especially true for medical waste.
Every country in the world today is facing large amounts of different waste generated by factories, healthcare facilities and individual homes. The reason behind this, of course being industrialization in large part. One way to get rid of that waste is by the thermal destruction practice best known as “incineration”.
Incineration is a process of degrading waste material by utilizing high temperatures, controlled air and special mixing. It can be used for solid waste and is widely accepted in most countries for disposing of most types of industrial and bio-medical waste.
The main purpose of an incinerator is to apply flame combustion and convert organic materials into carbon dioxide (CO2) and simple water vapor. The best incinerator machines out there are able to reduce the amount of waste as well as adapt it for later use in waste-to-energy plants. This way, byproducts such as heat, steam and even electricity can be created.
There are several types of incinerators, including:
• Bio-medical
• Industrial
• Mobile
• Garbage
Each one of these is used in a particular field. Let us take a special look at bio-medical and mobile incinerators as they are the most commonly used by healthcare facilities and laboratories.
Bio-Medical Incinerators
These special incinerators are used by the healthcare industry to reduce the amount of hazardous medical waste generated by hospitals, clinics, research laboratories, medical colleges and so on. This includes urine bags, syringes, blood-soaked bandages, needles, blades, other sharps, used surgical gloves and any other material that came in contact with patient’s blood.
This waste needs to be destroyed in a quick and effective manner as it is often infectious and can spread disease. Fortunately, high temperatures deployed in an incinerator are enough to completely destroy any pathogens or toxic elements and protect the environment.
Mobile Incinerators
These incinerators are often used by clinics for disposing of waste that they generate. One of the main reasons that they are widely used is that they are hygienic and easy-to-use. What they do is burn down most of the waste in a sterile manner so the rest of it (over 80% of the amount of waste can be reduced this way) can be sent to a nearby landfill. Otherwise, if the incinerator is not used prior to transporting the garbage to a landfill, the waste would attract carrions and other animals, scavengers and not to mention that it would be very hard to control the potential disease outbreak.
When it comes to incinerators however, it should be taken into account, especially when used for medical waste, that today there are more effective methods that are also safer for the environment. The biggest problem with incinerators is that they only destroy solid waste, but are great pollutants of the environment as the smoke they produce often contains toxic vapors.
