Billions of single-use face masks and shields are discarded every day due to the pandemic.
Bioresource Technology
converted surgical masks into liquid oil and found that its higher heating value is 43.5 megajoules per kilogram, which is only slightly lower than that of diesel fuel and gasoline at 45.8 and 46.3 MJ/kgAlthough pyrolysis is a promising method of processing waste PPE, assessing its overall energy and environmental sustainability is still a crucial step.
That’s the benefit of pyrolysis as a technology—it can convert all plastic feedstocks into an oil, says Huber. Despite all the research, there have yet to be any implementations of the proposed methods on a large scale. Last September, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency real-world cost, design, process, and environmental information about pyrolysis technologies to assist in the potential development of regulations for it, given that the country is still in the early stages of development of the technology., by the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives , converting plastics into fuel would not contribute to a circular economy because it does not produce new plastics.
Still, some researchers are ready to make our old masks into new fuels. “The technologies [to treat PPE waste effectively] already exist and were proved to be economically and environmentally efficient while protecting public health and mitigating climate changes,” says You. “The next step is scaling up the technology and process.”
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