JP2787423B2 - Melt sterilizer for infectious medical waste - Google Patents

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a melting sterilizer capable of melting and reducing the volume of infectious medical waste discharged from hospitals and the like.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art Infectious medical waste discharged from hospitals and other medical facilities is generally sterilized by chemical disinfection or incinerated and disposed of. These sterilization processes need to be performed in a closed system to prevent diffusion to the surroundings.

[0003]

However, in practice, it is extremely troublesome to separate the infectious medical waste and the non-infectious medical waste by waiting for the test result, so that a large amount of non-infectious medical waste is required. Waste is discharged in the form of contamination in infectious medical waste. In other words, the mixed waste containing a large amount of non-infectious waste plastic, absorbent cotton, gauze, a dialyzer (silicone resin) for artificial dialysis, etc., regardless of the above-mentioned disinfection method or incineration method. Since it is to be treated as infectious medical waste, the treatment amount is enormous, the treatment time is long, and the treatment cost is extremely high. In addition, for example, the treated waste needs to be incinerated separately or compressed and reduced in volume, so that including these steps further increases the treatment cost.

As a device for heating and compressing non-infectious waste, a volume reducer is known. This volume reducer has a configuration in which waste plastic or the like is forcibly pushed into an extruder and compressed. In addition, since the heating temperature is limited to 170 to 180 ° C., it cannot be used as a sterilizer for infectious waste.

[0005]

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION The present invention has been proposed in view of the above, and has a crusher for crushing infectious medical waste and a heating mechanism capable of heating the inside to a high temperature of about 200 to 270 ° C. The present invention relates to a melt sterilization device for infectious medical waste, comprising an extruder provided and an exhaust gas treatment device capable of treating chlorine gas and the like, and each of which is connected in a sealed manner.

[0006]

The melt sterilization apparatus of the present invention having the above-described structure crushes infectious medical waste stored in a predetermined container together with the container by the crusher, and pushes the crushed waste into the extruder. In addition to melting and sterilizing under high temperature, generated chlorine gas and the like can be rendered harmless by an exhaust gas treatment machine. Then, the infectious medical waste is transferred to the heating mechanism 2 in the extruder.
It can be completely sterilized by high-temperature heating of 00 to 270 ° C (usually 220 to 240 ° C) and chlorine gas generated at that time, and the volume is reduced, so that the processing cost can be greatly reduced. it can.

[0007]

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS The present invention will be described below in detail with reference to the embodiments shown in the drawings.

The melt sterilization apparatus of the present invention has a conveyor 1 as shown in FIG.
Or a container a containing non-infectious waste plastic
The (processing object) is loaded and carried, and faces the charging section 101 shown in FIG. As the above-mentioned conveyor 1, a roller conveyor capable of automatically judging the presence or absence of a processed material, automatically recognizing the processed material by a 0.75 KVA TRIAC control type motor or a bar code, and automatically recording was used.

Next, as shown in FIG. 2, in the charging section 101, when the outer shutter mechanism 3 is opened and the container a is pushed into the sealed crushing and extruding chamber 70 by the pusher mechanism 2, the outer shutter mechanism 3 is closed, When the motor roller 4 is driven and the inner shutter mechanism 5 is opened, the container a is guided to the vertically long crushing chamber 71. The crushing chamber 71 is a part of the crushing and extruding chamber 70, but has a closed wall with a double wall of the outer shutter mechanism 3 and the inner shutter mechanism 5. Also,
A crushing machine 7 is provided below the crushing chamber 71, and a hopper-like downstream portion 72 faces below the crushing machine 7, and a vertically movable pusher section 6 (pusher cylinder 61) is provided above the crushing machine. . The container a is fed into the extruder 8 shown in FIGS. 4 and 5 through the crusher 7 while being pressed by the pusher unit 6. The crushing and extruding chamber 70 includes a computer-controlled air cylinder 3
And an interlock type 2
The double door completely prevents liquid, odor, etc. from scattering to the outside. As shown in FIG. 3, the crushing press of the crushing machine 7 used was one that determines the presence or absence of a processed material (container a), applies inertia to the crushing machine 7, and increases the crushing efficiency. In addition, as a closed type crushing part, 5.5 KVA TR
Powerful crushing by two IAC control type motors (73, 73) and automatic determination of the load condition, automatic stop when overload, automatic reversal according to instructions from computer, power failure such as phase loss, etc. A structure that completely protects the motor was used. The bearing part was a quadruple completely hermetic seal made up of an oil seal and a mechanical seal. Negative pressure was always secured by gas suction from the screw extruded part, and a disinfecting solution was periodically sprayed for maintenance.

As shown in FIGS. 4 and 5, the cylinder 9 of the extruder 8 is electrically heated by a heating mechanism 90, and the gas generated in the cylinder 9 passes through the connecting portion 102 shown in FIG. 6 without leaking to the outside. It is led to the exhaust gas treatment device 10. The screw extruding section 81 of the extruding section 8 is 3.75
The two screws are driven by a KVA inverter motor, and the processed material is discharged in about 5 minutes by intelligent control based on a command automatically determined from a computer. The bearing part is composed of an oil seal and a mechanical seal.
It is a heavy complete hermetic seal. The heating mechanism 90 is a screw heating / melting unit, and can be completely sterilized by 32 independent power-controlled heaters 91 having a total voltage of 25 KVA controlled by a computer (about 200 to 27).
0 ° C.) and a power-saving heater that supplies power according to the processed material. In addition, by controlling the signal of the controller by the computer, the life of the heater as well as the disconnection of the heater can be automatically determined.

The extruder 7 is completely sterilized by staying at a temperature of 200 to 270 ° C. for 2 to 3 minutes and by chlorine gas generated during processing in the extruder 7. The generation of chlorine gas is always ensured in the extruder 7 because the inner bag is made of a PVC product in the case of the container a itself or a cut-off cardboard box.

[0012] As shown in FIG.
The caustic soda guided from the caustic soda tank 14 and pumped up is sprayed in the spray tank 12 and brought into contact with the passing exhaust gas to convert chlorine gas or the like into a solid such as NaCl and drop it into the tank 13. The solid matter collected at the bottom of the tank 13 may be appropriately extracted from the drain. Other gases are exhausted from the pipe tip 15. In order to remove the odor on the way, the odor is passed through the high-pressure discharge device 11. Gas separation and 1
The next processing unit guides gas and vapor generated at the time of melting from the processing unit to a high-frequency high-pressure discharge device at a high temperature,
It decomposes gas ionically. Further, the gas processing section can almost completely detoxify gases and the like generated when processing the processed material by passing the gas that has been subjected to the primary processing as described above through an absorption tower using caustic soda. The pH of caustic soda used for treatment is adjusted to B
After confirming the OD value and COD value, automatic ejection is performed.

On the other hand, as shown in FIG. 7, the residue 16 extruded from the extruder 8 is received by a conveyor 17 of a water cooler 18 and cooled by a shower while moving. At the end point of the conveyor 17, it is cut or crushed by a cutter 19 to an appropriate size.

In the melt sterilization apparatus of the present invention having the above configuration, the crushing and extruding chamber 70 and the exhaust gas treatment unit 10 are connected in a hermetically closed state. Since the crusher 7 is provided at the inlet of the extruder 8 in a series, the container a containing the infectious medical waste can be easily fed into the extruder 8, and the infectious medical waste Even if various things such as injection needles, syringes, waste plastics containing PVC products, dialyzers (silicone resin) for artificial dialysis, metals such as glass and scalpel, absorbent cotton, gauze, etc. Instead of pushing
Since it is crushed, it can be easily sent.

Further, for the purpose of sterilization, the heating mechanism 90 provided in the extruder 7 is heated to a high temperature of about 200 to 270 ° C., but harmful gas is generated. At the same time, odor is generated. Since an exhaust gas treatment device is installed as a countermeasure, the regulation values of the Pollution Control Law such as the Air Pollution Control Law can be cleared.

Further, since the residue has a strong odor, the residue is cooled with water in a water cooler 18 and then pulverized. The part is covered with a hood and is sucked into the exhaust gas treatment device 10. The pulverized material can be reused as fuel, regenerated pellets, aggregate, and the like after separation of foreign matter.

Although the embodiment of the present invention has been described above, the present invention is not limited to the above-described embodiment, and can be implemented in any manner without changing the configuration described in the claims.

[0018]

As described above, the melt sterilization apparatus of the present invention removes infectious medical waste stored in a predetermined container.
The whole container is crushed by the crusher, and the crushed waste is pushed into the extruder and melted at a high temperature, and sterilized,
The generated chlorine gas or the like can be rendered harmless by an exhaust gas treatment device. The infectious medical waste can be completely sterilized by high-temperature heating of 200 to 270 ° C. in the extruder and generated chlorine gas, and the volume can be reduced, so that the processing cost can be significantly reduced. Can be. At this time, even if a large amount of non-infectious medical waste is discharged in a state of being mixed into infectious medical waste, it can be efficiently melt-sterilized and reduced in volume, which is extremely practical value. Is high.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a schematic plan view of a melt sterilization apparatus according to one embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a side sectional view showing a charging section and a crusher in the melt sterilization apparatus according to one embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 3 is a side sectional view showing a pulverizing portion of a pulverizer in the melt sterilization apparatus according to one embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 4 is a plan view of an extruder in the melt sterilization apparatus according to one embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 5 is a side view of an extruder in the melt sterilization apparatus according to one embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 6 is a side sectional view showing an exhaust gas treatment machine in the melt sterilization apparatus according to one embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 7 is a side view showing a water cooler in the melt sterilization apparatus according to one embodiment of the present invention.

[Explanation of symbols]

 7 Crusher 8 Extruder 10 Exhaust gas processor 90 Heating mechanism a Container

Claims (1)

(57) [Claims] 1. A crusher for crushing infectious medical waste,
An extruder provided with a heating mechanism capable of heating the inside to a high temperature of about 200 to 270 ° C., and an exhaust gas treatment machine capable of treating chlorine gas and the like, each of which is connected in a hermetically closed manner; The infectious medical waste stored in the container is crushed by the crusher together with the container, and the crushed waste is pushed into the extruder to be melted and sterilized at a high temperature, and generated chlorine gas and the like are discharged. Melt sterilizer detoxified by a processing machine.