Abstract
Chittoor District is famous for renowned temples like Sri Venkateswara Swamy temple at Tirumala, Tiruchnoor, Sriklalahasti and Kanipakam. In Chittoor district is having around 9800 beds serving the medical needs of the people. The biomedical waste is segregated and temporally stored in blue, yellow and red color-coded bags. The non-infectious waste such as glove papers, plastic papers, covers and suture covers are put in blue bags yellow bag contains contaminated cotton swabs, gloves, mops, gauze, specimens, patient’s wastage, catheters, I.V. and blood set, suction tubes, urine bags and all draining tubes which are solid and liquid in nature. Human or animal tissues, organs or body parts that are highly infectious are collected and in red bags. The quantity of biomedical waste generated from the hospitals is about 1300 kg/day. Daily all these wastes are collected from all the hospitals and transported to the biomedical waste management plant which is located 25 km away from Tirupati. All these waste is incinerated in a dual-chamber incinerator of 100 kg/h capacity working for 8–10 h/day. The incinerator consists of primary chamber operated at temperature of 800–850 °C and secondary chamber operated at 1000–1100 °C. The incinerator is attached with attendant air pollution control facilities like a cyclone followed by a scrubber. The ash from the incinerator is buried in the landfill. The stack emissions and ash from the incinerator were analyzed for its leaching potential. The problem encountered during incineration, especially of waste components like placenta, etc., are also discussed in the paper.
Similar content being viewed by others
Keywords
1 Introduction
Chittoor District is famous for renowned temples like Sri Venkateswara Swamy temple at Tirumala, Tiruchnoor, Sriklalahasti and Kanipakam. Chittoor district has several regional hospitals in towns like Chittoor, Tirupati, Madanapalli, etc., Tirupati has health-care facilities like SVRRGG hospital, one government maternity hospital, one ayurvedic hospital, super speciality (SVIMS) hospital, 77 nursing homes, 51 clinics, etc., that cater to the requirements of neighboring districts also. The total capacity of all hospitals in Chittoor District in terms of number of beds is around 10,000.
The biomedical waste is the waste that is generated during the diagnosis, treatment or immunization of human beings or animals or in research activities pertaining thereto or in the production or testing of biological components. As per CPCB the biomedical waste is segregated and temporally stored in blue, yellow and red color-coded bags. The non-infectious waste such as glove papers, plastic papers, covers and suture covers are put in blue bags yellow bag contains contaminated cotton swabs, gloves, mops, gauze, specimens, patient’s wastage, catheters, I.V. and blood set, suction tubes, urine bags and all draining tubes which are solid and liquid in nature. Human or animal tissues, organs or body parts that are highly infectious are collected and in red bags. Approximately 1300 kg/day of infectious biomedical wastes are generated from these hospitals. Daily all these wastes are collected from all the hospitals and transported to the biomedical waste management plant by a private agency to their BMW treatment facility which is located near Pachikapalam village 25 km away from Tirupati. All these wastes are incinerated in a dual-chamber incinerator of 100 kg/h capacity working for 8–10 h/day.
2 Generation of Biomedical Waste from SVIMS Super Speciality Hospital, Tirupati—A Case Study
Sri Venkateswara Institute of Medical Science (SVIMS) is a super speciality hospital with 15 medical specialties, 6 surgical specialties, 5 diagnostic departments, 25 wards and 5 operation theaters and has a bed capacity of 450. Every day around 1500 outpatients visit the hospital for their medical needs. The total staff working in this super speciality hospital including doctors, nursing, medical and non-medical is 1436. The hospital sanitary staff clears the waste from wards, OTs and laboratories twice in a day, at 7.00 AM and 2.00 PM.
Every day around 1500 patients are visiting SVIMS hospital for their medical needs from various places. In addition to this, there are several in-patients in different wards under treatment. From different departments’ clinical waste generated during the treatment, which is collected in three separate color-coded bags depending on level of contamination. The non-infectious waste such as glove papers, plastic papers, covers and suture covers are put in blue bags. Yellow bag contains contaminated cotton swabs, gloves, mops, gauze, specimens, patient’s wastage, catheters, I.V. and blood set, suction tubes, urine bags and all draining tubes which are solid and liquid in nature. Human or animal tissues, organs or body parts that are highly infectious are collected and in red bags.
All these bags are deposited by the hospital staff in a protected area for collection by the personal of the biomedical management agency. The color-code bags are collected and placed in a designated vehicle for transportation of biomedical waste. In order to find the quantity of biomedical waste generated in SVIMS, each and every bag was weighed separately. Further, the waste was classified into incinerable and autoclavable. The incinerable waste was obtained as 110–120 kg/day and the autoclavable waste 30–40 kg/day.
3 Transportation
The specially designated vehicles with biohazard symbol collect daily the biomedical waste from all the hospitals located in Chittoor District and are transported to the BMW processing (incineration) and disposal site located at Pachikapalam village 25 km away from Tirupati. Every day the vehicles start from the disposal site in the morning and collect the waste from various hospitals in Chittoor District up to the evening and then return back to the BMW treatment facility and treated.
4 Treatment and Disposal of Biomedical Waste
The biomedical waste thus collected every day is first sorted into autoclavable and incinerable manually in a designated area. Autoclavable waste includes plastic syringes, catheters, I.V. and blood set, suction tubes, urine bags, draining tubes, etc., which are plastics and can be recycled. Before autoclaving, the waste is soaked in a RCC tank filled with 1:3 sodium hypochlorite solutions for 5–10 min. The waste is then placed in autoclave working at a temperature of 110–120 °C and sterilized for 45 min. After that the recyclables are taken out from the autoclave then all the recyclables are sent for shredding. Sterilized recyclable plastic wastes from autoclave are fed into a shredder.
In this shredder, the recyclable items are shred into small pieces of 12–18 mm size, the shredded pieces are sent to an authorized agency of pollution control board for further processing; recyclables are graded and subjected to grinding in a mechanical grinder of 400–500 kg capacity. After grinding, the pellets are washed with detergent solution, dried and made into granules. The granules are sent for reusing and casting.
5 Incineration of Biomedical Waste
Incinerable waste that contains human or animal tissues, organs or body parts, placenta, viscera, etc., which are highly infectious is incinerated in a dual-chamber incinerator. The incinerator consists of primary chamber and attains a temperature of 800–850 °C and a secondary chamber where in a maximum temperature of 1000–1100 °C. The capacity of incinerator is 100 kg/h. The incinerator is attached with a cyclone separator followed by a scrubber for treatment of flue gasses with induced draft. The exit of the scrubber is attached to a stack of 45 cm diameter and height of 30 m for venting of emission gasses. The waste from the scrubbing fluid is collected in a sedimentation tank and the clarified water is recycled in scrubber. Sludge from the sedimentation tank is disposed along with ash by land burial. The incinerable waste is directly fed into primary chamber and incinerated for 45–60 min. The draft from the primary chamber is led into the secondary chamber maintained at a temperature at 1000–1100 °C for further destruction of gaseous components. The emissions from the secondary chamber are sucked by induced draft and are first fed into cyclone separator and then to the scrubber where water is sprayed. Ashes are collected from the bottom through the gratings and disposed by land burial.
6 Emission and Ash Analysis
Stack monitoring was performed to determine the pollution levels in the stack gasses and the results of stack emission analysis are shown in Table 1.
The results of stack emission analysis indicate that all regulatory parameters are within permissible limits and the overall working of incinerator is satisfactory.
7 Ash Analysis
The quantity of ash generated is 5–6 kg/100 kg waste incinerated. Thus, a total of 65–80 kg of ash is generated per day of operation. The ash was subjected to further analysis and the chemical analysis is shown in Table 2.
Expectedly ash is rich in phosphorus and nitrogen and may, in fact, be used to supplement vegetative growth. Ash is disposed by land burial in lined pit of size 5 × 7 × 7 m in layers of 30 cm thick with a covering material of locally excavated soils of 10–15 cm thick. The sharps and blades are blunted and cut into pieces and disposed along with ash and sludge by land burial.
8 Conclusion
A total of 1300 kg/day of BMW is generated from all the health-care facilities in the district. Biomedical wastes are treated by incineration of infectious waste and autoclaving of recyclable plastic waste and the ash generated by land burial. The ash and emission analysis are satisfactory.
Treatment of biomedical waste by plasma gasification and verification process may avoid the process of waste segregation, autoclaving and incineration and may further reduce possible pollution from emission and ashes. With this process, the operation and maintenance problems can be minimized and syngasses can be used for generation of power, and therefore the process of plasma gasification and verification is recommended for treatment of biomedical waste.
Reference
Central Pollution Control Board of India (1998) Bio-medical waste (management & handling) rules (Amended in 2000 and 2003).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Hanumaiah, N., Lakshmi Narayana Prasad, P., Karthikeyan, J. (2020). A Study on Biomedical Waste Management in Chittoor District. In: Ghosh, S. (eds) Urban Mining and Sustainable Waste Management. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-0532-4_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-0532-4_2
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore
Print ISBN: 978-981-15-0531-7
Online ISBN: 978-981-15-0532-4
eBook Packages: Earth and Environmental ScienceEarth and Environmental Science (R0)