Turn the stubborn 'trash' into a knitting sheet

In hospitals, there is a lot of medical waste every day. Among them, glass junk such as medicine tubes, medicine bottles, infusion bottles . are especially difficult to handle, many places only piled up, but no treatment.

Particularly, General Hospital of Thoi Lai district, TP. Can Tho, about 120 liters of glass waste are released every month. Previously, this amount of garbage has no way to handle, just put out of the environment to make the environment polluted and endanger human health.

Homemade glass crusher

Doctor Nguyen Hieu Hiep, Director of Thoi Lai District Hospital, sought to handle this ' stubborn ' type of garbage. Dr. Hiep built a incinerator behind the hospital. However, when incinerating garbage, dust and exhaust emissions arise causing environmental pollution, affecting the health and life of the surrounding people.

The finished products are made of medical waste.(Photo T.Hai)

In addition, it is the cost, especially fuel, for each incineration is quite high, which also makes it difficult to handle. Glass rubbish needs to be burned at temperatures between 8,000 and 10,000 ^o C to burn but then lumps and still decomposes when put into the environment.

Doctor Hiep gave some glass tubes to the milled grind mill. These tubes crumble into small pieces. Dr. Hiep thought of making use of these fragments to cast into paving sheets - both useful and not polluting the environment.

But in order to handle a large amount of waste that requires a larger and dedicated machine, Dr. Hiep then went to the bottle store to buy the appropriate metal bars, making it a crusher. After the machine was completed, he grinded a large amount of hospital glass.

Through 2 times grinding, glass beads are only as small as sand grains, size 1/4 mm ³ . He mixed this glass of sand with cement and lime powder and poured it into the mold. After dryness, this mixture forms solid plates with very high hardness. He brought these sheets of materials to make lining pads, lining the hospital's warehouse floor, and found it very suitable.

Low cost

From the initial success, Dr. Hiep boldly applied to practical treatment of waste at hospitals. Since the end of 2008, he has directed the hospital to perform daily sorting of waste from the beginning, leaving glass bottles and other types of waste separate.

In addition to the greatest environmental benefits, this method also helps to save a lot of waste disposal costs for hospitals.

With a glass incinerator imported from the US, the purchase price is about VND 500 million, can process 1,000 liters of glass within 10 hours, consume about 30 kWh of electricity and 220 liters of diesel, the cost must be paid for This garbage is 3.33 million VND.

For Dr. Hiep's method, a homemade machine costs a total of VND 4 million (not including the work), the structure is simple and compact. Also with the above amount of garbage, only about 12 kWh of electricity, no diesel oil, cost more than VND 12,000. This method is superior to the incinerator in place to make use of glass waste to create the knitting plates and applications in life.

Currently Dr. Nguyen Hieu Hiep continues to develop this research into a scientific topic entitled ' Medical solid waste treatment machine (glass group)' .