ABSTRACT
This paper aims to critically review the production of alternative fuels through medical plastic waste. In the recent past, medical plastic waste has been disposed of and incinerated in the dumping yards, which is the main cause of the threat of infection and environmental hazards. Adopting proper waste management and the appropriate technology like the 5R's (refuse, reduce, reuse, repurpose, and recycle) may significantly improve the ecosystem. Moreover, the 5R's is a comprehensive approach that can be applied, either awareness of stakeholders or enforcement mandate and regulation by the government. The current review suggested the possible route for converting medical-plastic waste into drop-in fuel and value-added products to minimize the waste through suitable technology. In this, the pyrolysis technique plays an important role which is more ecologically friendly, effective and produces minimal pollutants. It has been observed that using COVID medical waste management (CMWM) technology, 70–80 % plastic pyrolysis oil (PPO), 10–15% bio-char, and gaseous fuel can be extracted. As per the ASTM, the extracted PPO is a potential feedstock for the CI engine fuel. This review work provides a suitable solution for CMWM and improves the quality of medical infrastructure for sanitation in a sustainable mode. © 2022 Elsevier Ltd
ABSTRACT
The contribution addresses the issue of the sustainable transformation of the urban and built environment through a reflection on the strategic and design opportunities for the renewal of public residential neighbourhoods. The state of the art, analysed in the first part of the article, consists of an examination of strategies, policies and good practices of urban sustainability, useful to define the analytical framework of the research, presented in the second part of the contribution. The theoretical perspective and the research results applied to the case study take into account the transformations induced by the global Covid-19 pandemic and is therefore placed in a post-pandemic perspective. Enabling technologies at the urban scale, related to mobility and urban and residential public spaces are addressed. At the architectural scale, the new spatial and technological needs of living are examined, which are combined with the need to renew the residential housing stock, now structurally and technologically obsolete. In the last part, the partial results of research applied to the case study of the INA CASA Sbarre Inferiori public housing estate in Reggio Calabria, the object of theoretical and design analysis, are presented. The contribution aims to highlight the design opportunities for this urban context with a view to ecological transition and sustainable development, showing how to design experimentation on the scale of the residential district can be readapted to the dimension of the village or small town. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.