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      Technological review on thermochemical conversion of COVID-19-related medical wastes

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          Highlights

          • •

            COVID-19 pandemic brought huge amount of medical wastes, which is mainly made of plastic polymer.

          • •

            Thermochemical treatments (incineration, torrefaction, pyrolysis, and gasification) are reviewed.

          • •

            The review focuses on the applicability of those technologies to convert the medical wastes.

          • •

            Incineration has the highest material flexibility, followed by gasification and pyrolysis.

          • •

            Gasification and pyrolysis are considered as the most promising conversion technologies.

          Abstract

          COVID-19 pandemic has brought tremendous environmental burden due to huge amount of medical wastes (about 54,000 t/d as of November 22, 2020), including face mask, gloves, clothes, goggles, and sanitizer/disinfectant containers. A proper waste management is urgently required to mitigate the spread of the disease, minimize the environmental impacts, and take their potential advantages for further utilization. This work provides a prospective review on the possible thermochemical treatments for those COVID-19 related medical wastes (CMW), as well as their possible conversion to fuels. The characteristics of each waste are initially analyzed and described, especially their potential as energy source. It is clear that most of CMWs are dominated by plastic polymers. Thermochemical processes, including incineration, torrefaction, pyrolysis, and gasification, are reviewed in terms of applicability for CMW. In addition, the mechanical treatment of CMW into sanitized refuse-derived fuel (SRDF) is also discussed as the preliminary stage before thermochemical conversion. In terms of material flexibility, incineration is practically applicable for all types of CMW, although it has the highest potential to emit the largest amount of CO 2 and other harmful gasses. Furthermore, gasification and pyrolysis are considered promising in terms of energy conversion efficiency and environmental impacts. On the other hand, carbonization faces several technical problems following thermal degradation due to insufficient operating temperature.

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          Persistence of coronaviruses on inanimate surfaces and their inactivation with biocidal agents

          G Kampf, D Todt, S. Pfaender … (2020)
          Summary Currently, the emergence of a novel human coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, has become a global health concern causing severe respiratory tract infections in humans. Human-to-human transmissions have been described with incubation times between 2-10 days, facilitating its spread via droplets, contaminated hands or surfaces. We therefore reviewed the literature on all available information about the persistence of human and veterinary coronaviruses on inanimate surfaces as well as inactivation strategies with biocidal agents used for chemical disinfection, e.g. in healthcare facilities. The analysis of 22 studies reveals that human coronaviruses such as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) coronavirus, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) coronavirus or endemic human coronaviruses (HCoV) can persist on inanimate surfaces like metal, glass or plastic for up to 9 days, but can be efficiently inactivated by surface disinfection procedures with 62–71% ethanol, 0.5% hydrogen peroxide or 0.1% sodium hypochlorite within 1 minute. Other biocidal agents such as 0.05–0.2% benzalkonium chloride or 0.02% chlorhexidine digluconate are less effective. As no specific therapies are available for SARS-CoV-2, early containment and prevention of further spread will be crucial to stop the ongoing outbreak and to control this novel infectious thread.
          Article 0 comments Cited 1467 times – based on 0 reviews     Review now
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            Stability of SARS-CoV-2 in different environmental conditions

            Alex Chin, Julie T S Chu, Mahen R A Perera … (2020)
            We previously reported the detection of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) in different clinical samples. 1 This virus can be detected on different surfaces in a contaminated site. 2 Here, we report the stability of SARS-CoV-2 in different environmental conditions. We first measured the stability of SARS-CoV-2 at different temperatures. SARS-CoV-2 in virus transport medium (final concentration ∼6·8 log unit of 50% tissue culture infectious dose [TCID50] per mL) was incubated for up to 14 days and then tested for its infectivity (appendix p 1). The virus is highly stable at 4°C, but sensitive to heat. At 4°C, there was only around a 0·7 log-unit reduction of infectious titre on day 14. With the incubation temperature increased to 70°C, the time for virus inactivation was reduced to 5 mins. We further investigated the stability of this virus on different surfaces. Briefly, a 5 μL droplet of virus culture (∼7·8 log unit of TCID50 per mL) was pipetted on a surface (appendix p 1; ∼cm2 per piece) and left at room temperature (22°C) with a relative humidity of around 65%. The inoculated objects retrieved at desired time-points were immediately soaked with 200 μL of virus transport medium for 30 mins to elute the virus. Therefore, this recovery of virus does not necessarily reflect the potential to pick up the virus from casual contact. No infectious virus could be recovered from printing and tissue papers after a 3-hour incubation, whereas no infectious virus could be detected from treated wood and cloth on day 2. By contrast, SARS-CoV-2 was more stable on smooth surfaces. No infectious virus could be detected from treated smooth surfaces on day 4 (glass and banknote) or day 7 (stainless steel and plastic). Strikingly, a detectable level of infectious virus could still be present on the outer layer of a surgical mask on day 7 (∼0·1% of the original inoculum). Interestingly, a biphasic decay of infectious SARS-CoV-2 could be found in samples recovered from these smooth surfaces (appendix pp 2–7). 39 representative non-infectious samples tested positive by RT-PCR 3 (data not shown), showing that non-infectious viruses could still be recovered by the eluents. We also tested the virucidal effects of disinfectants by adding 15 μL of SARS-CoV-2 culture (∼7·8 log unit of TCID50 per mL) to 135 μL of various disinfectants at working concentration (appendix p 1). With the exception of a 5-min incubation with hand soap, no infectious virus could be detected after a 5-min incubation at room temperature (22°C). Additionally, we also found that SARS-CoV-2 is extremely stable in a wide range of pH values at room temperature (pH 3–10; appendix p 1). Overall, SARS-CoV-2 can be highly stable in a favourable environment, 4 but it is also susceptible to standard disinfection methods.
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              Review of fast pyrolysis of biomass and product upgrading

              A.V. Bridgwater (2012)
              Article 0 comments Cited 565 times – based on 0 reviews     Review now
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                Author and article information

                Journal
                Journal ID (nlm-ta): Resour Conserv Recycl
                Journal ID (iso-abbrev): Resour Conserv Recycl
                Title: Resources, Conservation, and Recycling
                Publisher: Elsevier B.V.
                ISSN (Print): 0921-3449
                ISSN (Electronic): 1879-0658
                Publication date PMC-release: 15 January 2021
                Publication date (Print): April 2021
                Publication date (Electronic): 15 January 2021
                Volume: 167
                Page: 105429
                Affiliations
                [a ]Chemical Engineering Department, Engineering Faculty, Gadjah Mada University, Jl. Grafika no 2, Bulaksumur,Yogyakarta 55281, Indonesia
                [b ]Agrotechnology Innovation Center PIAT UGM, Berbah Sleman Yogyakarta, Indonesia
                [c ]Department of Transdisciplinary Science and Engineering, School of Environment and Society, Tokyo Institute of Technology, 2-12-1 Oookayama Meguro-ku Tokyo 152-8550, Japan
                [d ]Institute of Industrial Science, The University of Tokyo, 4-6-1 Komaba, Meguro-ku, Tokyo 153-8505, Japan
                Author notes
                [* ]Corresponding author.
                Article
                Publisher Item ID: S0921-3449(21)00036-7 Publisher ID: 105429
                DOI: 10.1016/j.resconrec.2021.105429
                PMC ID: 7832489
                PubMed ID: 33519084
                SO-VID: b2b16b0d-dd93-43f8-b017-bc9319372d14
                Copyright © © 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
                License:

                Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active.

                History
                Date received : 1 September 2020
                Date revision received : 22 December 2020
                Date accepted : 11 January 2021
                Categories
                Subject: Review

                Keywords: medical waste,covid-19,thermochemical conversion,refuse-derived fuel
                Data availability:
                Keywords: medical waste, covid-19, thermochemical conversion, refuse-derived fuel

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