Though quantity and quality of medical and infectious wastes become large and complex due to explosive increase in need for a health life by ever increasing public, the status of medical waste management in Korea is however still in an infant stage. Furthermore the fear to infectious virus spreads such as acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) and hepatitis B calls for an immediate preventive measure for the prevention of secondary pollutions in a various fields.
Incineration has been proven to be an effective way of reducing the volume and the hazard of medical wastes. There are a few medical waste incinerators in Korea, but most are not even operated properly. And pathogen's release and emission of various pollutants can affect the public directly because most medical waste incinerators are located in the crowded area.
The objectives of this study are to investigate the potential if hospital incinerator release pathogenic bacteria into the ambient environment, to predict pollutants from the incinerator using CEC program, and to suggest the proper operating condition of biomedical waste incinerator.
A hospital's incinerator in Seoul with Waste (bodyparts) feed rate of the incinerator is a nominal of 20 kg/h and heating value of 750 kcal/kg is investigated. The multiple chamber incinerator consists of a fixed-hearth and two combustion zones. Light-oil burners in first and second chambers are used to maintain incineration.
The incinerator is spiked with $3.70×10^9$ spores of Bacillus stearothermophilus that are poured on crumpled newspaper in plastic bags and are burned with routine wastes. The total destruction effciency was 99.9957%. $SO_2$ and NOx emission are lower than standards. But higher value of CO emission are made with three times.
For the efficient operation of hospital incinerator, the suggestion on the fashion of combustion air inject by verified chemical equilibrium calculation model suggest that combustion air must be injected to the first chamber by 60% of stoichiometric requirement and to the second chamber much then 10% of excess air at least.
