The harmless treatments of medical waste have significantly drawn people’s attention owing to their risks to health-care staff, the public, and the environment. The traditional thermal technology for processing medical waste may cause indispensable secondary pollution such as dioxin, furan, and heavy metals, and infectious materials that may remain in the solid residual. Thermal plasma technologies offer advantages of effectively treating medical waste due to its high temperature and energy density, lower pollutant emissions, rapid start-up and shut-down, and smaller size of the installation. These benefits play roles in the treatment of medical waste on-site or off-site, especially when somewhere encounters an abnormally sharp increase in medical waste. This paper mainly introduces the typical thermal plasma processes of medical waste and its central component, plasma furnace. Meanwhile, how process parameters influence the formed gaseous and solid products, the performances of mass and volume reduction, pathogen destruction, and energy recovery, are discussed in detail. Finally, the mechanism of the thermal plasma process is also analyzed.

中文翻译：

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医疗废物的热等离子体处理

医疗废物的无害化处理因其对医护人员、公众和环境的风险而备受关注。传统的热技术处理医疗废物可能会造成不可缺少的二次污染，如二恶英、呋喃和重金属，以及可能残留在固体残留物中的传染性物质。热等离子体技术具有高温和能量密度高、污染物排放低、启动和关闭快速以及装置尺寸小等优点，可有效处理医疗废物。这些好处在就地或异地处理医疗废物中发挥作用，尤其是当某处遇到医疗废物异常急剧增加时。本文主要介绍了典型的医疗废物热等离子工艺及其核心部件等离子炉。同时，详细讨论了工艺参数如何影响形成的气态和固态产物，质量和体积减少，病原体破坏和能量回收的性能。最后，还分析了热等离子体工艺的机理。