[Stoves] Request for proposals: Medical Waste Incinerator for Humanitarian Emergencies from Innocentive

[Andrew Heggie]

On 6 September 2015 at 20:42, Crispin Pemberton-Pigott
<crispinpigott at outlook.com> wrote:
> Dear Andrew
>
> People who visit clinics are sick and get injections. Dealing with the
> needles is a big issue in a rural where they usually burn in a pit next to
> the clinic and then bury what remains. Children end up with the rusty
> needles.

Which is my point: the proposal is asking for something better than
just burning but does it need to turn the metal to ashes? Here in UK
scissors, forceps etc are incinerated becuase replacement is cheaper
than cleaning and autoclaving.
>
> It is not difficult to burn a needle, but necessary. Keeping kids out of
> garbage is hard. I suppose you can go for two levels of processing: burn
> everything wet and heat everything metal as stage one, then turn everything
> to ash or little flakes of rust as the second standard.

There is the possibility of running the grate at moderate temperature
to kill off any pathogens and then oxidising remaining metal objects
in a hotter part of the fire on firebrick. The grate can then
withstand having stuff dumped on it and the smaller amount of residual
metal then removed from the ash for incineration in the hotter stage.

The thing about an incinerator or crematorium is that  there is no
downstream need for the heat so a bit of heat recycling enables
evaporation of water, the steam from which is then reheated to the
higher temperature required by the specification, which we still
haven't had confirmed.

> It turned out the cleaner polished the floors on Fridays. They unplugged the
> medical life support equipment from the only plug near the door. Then they
> polished the floor, simultaneously polishing off the patient. When done,
> they plugged the equipment back in and left. That's a true story.

and so sad.

With all the news of refugees escaping war torn regions to end up
drowning  trying to reach Europe I am so grateful to be privileged and
lucky to live in a reasonable democracy.

AJH