VietNamNet Bridge – On August 10, the Bac Kan-based Hoa Tu Long Industry Company officially put the medical waste incinerator (YT30) into operation. This is the first high-tech incinerator made in Vietnam.

The incinerator has the capacity of 30-50 kilos of medical waste per hour. The patent has been granted by the Ministry of Science and Technology to Trinh Dinh Nang, Director of Hoa Tu Long.

YT30 incinerator has been made to the order of the Bac Kan Town Healthcare Center. This is a kind of continuous incinerator, which means that when the incinerator is on operation, one still open the incinerator’s door to put in more things.

Scientists say this could be described as a waste disposal system in miniature, rather than the single incinerator like the ones imported from foreign countries to Vietnam in recent years.

There is a big advantage of the incinerator manufactured with Vietnamese technology is that after burning, only glass and aluminum dioxide are left, while all other substances would be burned off, including needles. Especially, the incineration speed is four times faster than the incinerators with the same capacity made in the UK, Germany, or Japan.

According to Trinh Dinh Nang, the incineration cost of one kilo of medical waste is very low at 5000 dong, if using diesel, while the cost would be 2000 dong only if using waste oil. Meanwhile, if using the incinerator made in the UK, hospitals would have to pay 50,000 dong per kilo. The Bac Kan General Hospital is using the incinerator.

Some scientists have also expressed their special interests in the incinerator, saying that one needs to spend 80,000 dong on average to incinerate one kilo of waste with the incinerators made in the US or Japan.

Especially, it would be 40-50 percent cheaper to invest in the IT incineration technology than buying foreign products.

The combustion chamber has two furnaces: primary and secondary. Medical waste would be put into the primary furnace first. After the waste is burnt, the smoke would be transferred to the secondary furnace for further burning.

After that, the smoke is passed through to the dust handling system using Nano technology, then through the water tank before it discharges into the environment. The cooling water system runs in accordance with the industrial cyclical process.

YT incinerator of Hoa Tu Long is made of good materials, therefore, it is expected to have long life expectancy with the heat resistant tile life of up to 10 years, furnace cover life of 6-7 years and easily repaired. The incinerator has also been installed with supporting devices such as computer, two independent temperature sensors, oil pumps, and direct observation system via camera.

There is an interesting thing in the patent that the inventor – Trinh Dinh Nang – is an “engineer with no university degree.” Though Nang did not study at any university, he still has invented the incinerator with his creativeness, which is a pride of the Vietnamese technology.

Especially, Nang has affirmed that he himself has made all the materials and equipments of the incinerator with the materials from domestic sources, and that he only had to use foreign made factories.

The incinerator is believed to make a breakthrough in medical waste treatment. A lot of hospitals have complained they cannot do anything with the waste, since incinerators have got too old, while they do not have money to buy new ones.

C. V