Design and techno-economic investigation of solar dish collector waste treatment system for infectious personal protection equipment and masks

Abstract

The used infectious PPEs/Masks are directly disposed into the environment, which may increase huge bio-medical waste every day; the huge production of biomedical waste is not due to their disposal but to their massive utilization. It expands the rate of cross-infection and ecological contamination. In the present work, the infectious PPEs/Mask waste treatment plant was designed under three configurations: solar, fossil fuel, and electrical operated plant with an infectious waste treatment capacity of 0.1–100 tons per day. A thermodynamic study is carried out for the basic configuration, and the economic-environmental study is performed for three designed configurations. The maximum sustainability index, energy and exergy efficiency for the COVID19 infectious waste treatment plant is 1.62, 51.80% and 38.53%. The maximum energy and exergy loss found in the pyrolysis reactor and input source (Solar and Fossil fuel). The waste treatment capacity of a 1-ton per hour plant was found as the best feasible plant. The selling cost of the discharged product was found as Rs.15.90/kg in solar configuration, which is 66.09% less than the market price. The average selling cost was identified as Rs.16.64 per kg for 43 locations in Pan-India for the payback period of 5 years. The CO2 emission has been identified as 19,290 and 30,723 kg of CO2/annum is discharged from fossil fuel and electrical energy operating configurations. The social cost of the fossil fuel and electrical-based designed pyrolysis plant has been estimated as Rs.12,66,317/lifetime and Rs.20,16,822/lifetime.