TECHNOLOGY FOR TOMORROW
MAK INCINERATOR
WASTE MANAGEMENT THROUGH A RANGE OF HIGH GRADE STAINLESS STEEL INCINERATORS
Location: Uganda
Developer: The late Eng. Dr Moses Kizza Musaazi and Mr. Nicholas Kasekende
Website: http://t4tafrica.co/about-us/
The MAK incinerator has been designed to respond to the need for an affordable but environmentally safer way to dispose off Health Care Waste (HCW). The incinerator’s ability to self-sustain combustion in the absence of auxiliary fuel is key to its sustainability particularly in countries affected by deforestation and in the context of rapidly depleting supplies of fossil fuels.
The Challenge
Health Care Waste [HCW] is a by–product of health care that includes sharps, non sharps, blood, body parts, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, medical devices, and radioactive materials. Poor management of HCW exposes Health Workers, Waste Handlers and the community to infectious , toxic effects and injuries.
Without heat treatment, untreated infectious waste piles up around hospitals and health centres or is burnt using ineffective shallow pits, causing air pollution and leaving behind melted plastics and needles that are still sharp and infectious.
The Solution
The MAK incinerator reduces waste by 95% volume. They have been used to safely manage biohazardous waste at hospitals and health centers across the country.
The incinerator has two combustion chambers; that’s the Primary chamber catering for destruction of solid waste at an average temperature of 850 C and Secondary chamber for destruction of gaseous waste at 900 C. The incinerator is preheated and burned down with locally available paper waste or card boards some of which may come from pharmacy departments. Waste is loaded in the primary chamber according to the moisture content. The medical waste is loaded in bulk at once per load.
Once pre-heated, the incinerator uses the caloric value of the incinerated waste to maintain a high temperature of above 900 C, thus greatly minimizing the operating cost of the system relative to diesel / electric / biomass assisted combustion processes.
A simplified version of the incinerator is used to manage compound waste in schools and homesteads including sanitary pads which usually lead to faster fill-up of latrines where these pads are frequently disposed off.
The Impact
HIGHLIGHTS OF THE WORK TO DATE:
The Mak series of incinerators are a premier health care waste management solution for infectious waste in Uganda today with growing installations at different levels of health centres across the country including at health centre II, health centre IV, General hospitals and regional referral hospitals.
On top of installation, training of health care waste workers on health care waste management including segregation are undertaken at the health centres. With more than 50 incinerators installed in the last 18 months, there is a reduction in ground and water pollution around the health facilities, reduction in the transmission of more than 30 pathogens, and enhanced safety of health care workers, patients and communities surrounding health care facilities. Installations at health centre II benefit upto 5,000 people and at regional referral hospitals up to 2,000,000 people.
Next Stage:
A loan of 25,000 Euros from OVO over one year will support material inputs for incinerator production and cushion the company against price fluctuation of materials and enhance profitability.
Ongoing research is geared towards understanding all health care waste streams at the different levels of health care facilities and developing context specific solutions and models to deploy at the health facilities beyond just incinerators. With 6937 health facilities in Uganda and the majority having inadequate health care waste management capacity, there is a lot of room for innovation.