Comprehensive evaluation of typical medical waste treatment technologies in view of environmental and economic perspectives.

The outbreak of COVID-19 has caused a sharp increase in the amount of medical waste (MW), which is infectious and harmful to the environment and human body. However, existing MW disposal methods face challenges in achieving high treatment efficiency, and creates an urgent need for more cost-effective and environmentally friendly technologies. In this research, a comprehensive evaluation, including comprehensive environment assessment (CEA), life cycle assessment (LCA), and economic assessment (EA), was proposed for three typical MW treatment methodologies (i.e., in situ friction heat treatment technology, chemical disinfection, and microwave sterilization). Results showed that the in-situ friction heat treatment had the minimal environmental impact with CEA score of 5509.11, whereas the chemical disinfection technology had the highest value of 69384.62. In terms of LCA, microwave sterilization had a relatively low global warming potential (6.01 E+02 kg CO2 eq). From the EA perspective, chemical disinfection technology emerged as the most economically viable option, costing merely 29.64% of that of microwave sterilization. After environment-economy integration analysis, in situ friction heat treatment technology emerged as the best disposal method, which had a relatively low pollution emissions and reasonable cost among the three technologies. This study can serve as a guidance for treating MW in a more environmentally friendly and economical way in the future.