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Review
. 2021 Jul:275:130092.
doi: 10.1016/j.chemosphere.2021.130092. Epub 2021 Feb 23.

Pyrolysis: An effective technique for degradation of COVID-19 medical wastes

Selvakumar Dharmaraj  1 , Veeramuthu Ashokkumar  2 , Rajesh Pandiyan  3 , Heli Siti Halimatul Munawaroh  4 , Kit Wayne Chew  5 , Wei-Hsin Chen  6 , Chawalit Ngamcharussrivichai  7
Affiliations
Review

Pyrolysis: An effective technique for degradation of COVID-19 medical wastes

Selvakumar Dharmaraj et al. Chemosphere. 2021 Jul.

Retraction in

Abstract

COVID-19 has led to the enormous rise of medical wastes throughout the world, and these have mainly been generated from hospitals, clinics, and other healthcare establishments. This creates an additional challenge in medical waste management, particularly in developing countries. Improper managing of medical waste may have serious public health issues and a significant impact on the environment. There are currently three disinfection technologies, namely incineration, chemical and physical processes, that are available to treat COVID-19 medical waste (CMW). This study focuses on thermochemical process, particularly pyrolysis process to treat the medical waste. Pyrolysis is a process that utilizes the thermal instability of organic components in medical waste to convert them into valuable products. Besides, the technique is environmentally friendly, more efficient and cost-effective, requires less landfill capacity, and causes lower pollution. The current pandemic situation generates a large amount of plastic medical wastes, which mainly consists of polyethylene, polypropylene, polystyrene, polyethylene terephthalate, and nylon. These plastic wastes can be converted into valuable energy products like oil, gas and char through pyrolysis process. This review provides detailed information about CMW handling, treatment, valuable product generation, and proper discharge into the open environment.

Keywords: COVID-19 medical waste; Disinfection techniques; Energy conversion; Medical waste management; Pyrolysis.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Figures

Image 1
Graphical abstract
Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Various types of plastic wastes generated from the packaging, medical and other plastic waste sources.
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
COVID-19 waste management approaches and future prospects.
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
COVID-19 waste generation and disinfection treatments.
Fig. 4
Fig. 4
Common plastic components present in the COVID-19 medical waste.
Fig. 5
Fig. 5
Different types of reactors that are used for the treatment of COVID-19 plastic waste (Saad et al., 2015: Lopez et al., 2017; Basu, 2018; Campuzano et al., 2019, reproduced with permission).
Fig. 6
Fig. 6
Fractional condensation device setup for the pyrolysis oil obtained from the thermal degardation of plastic waste.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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