Hazardous Waste Management System – Sterilwave 250 

Hazardous Waste Management System from Bertin Technologies is an innovative concept for the collection, sterilization and elimination of bio-hazardous waste produced on healthcare hospitals: directly installed on-site, Sterilwave automatically converts infectious medical waste into regular municipal waste.

Sterilwave is based on microwave technology to proceed to the waste disinfection. Thanks to its dual-phase process (grinding and disinfection), it enables medical waste bacterial inactivation in around 30-35 minutes and needs only 5 to 10 operator time!

Sterilwave not only offers efficient and rapid waste disinfection levels in excess of 8 Log 10, it also converts this biohazardous waste into dry and inert waste, with a weight reduction of over 25% and with a volume reduction of 80%.

Sterilwave transforms any type of hospital and laboratory waste, solid and liquid medical waste, glass, sharp containers…

Sterilwave is approved and recommended by numerous International Health Institutions and the WHO as an efficient system reaching all environmental requirement and without any liquid effluent rejection.

Sterilwave key benefits

Innovative onsite Solution for bio-hazardous Waste Management

The main benefits of Sterilwave are due to the use of micro-wave technology instead of autoclave solution with is very more restricting for the installation and operating costs:

Neither storage nor transport of hazardous waste anymore

Grinding & microwave sterilization in one single vessel

No pressure, no water consummation, no liquid effluent

Low operating and maintenance costs

Cost effective

Compact on-site solution

Low operational cost

No need for storage area

No need for third-party collection and transport

Volume reduction up to 80% and weight reduction up to 25%

Eco-friendly

No liquid effluent

Zero environmental impact

On-site equipment, no transport

Easy to use

Easy installation (in just a few hours)

Fully automatic process

No need for specific technical qualifications

Easy maintenance

High safety and risk reduction

No need to store bio-hazardous waste on site: less risk of exposure to staff

Safe microwave technology and process

No risk of explosion

Complete process traceability

Efficient

Bacterial reduction up to 8Log10

System tested by independent agencies (Pasteur Institute)

Exceeds all international regulatory standards

Dry waste output – 80% volume reduction

Sterilwave process description

First Step : Weighting/Loading

An electronic weighting system calculates and records the weight of the waste going to be proceed in order to track all operations of the process. All kind of healthcare waste (solid, soft, cutting, performant, glass, plastic, bandage, dialysis…) can be disinfected by the system.

For the Sterilwave440, loading can be made by dropping the waste bags manually or automatically with a container lift (option).

For the Sterilwave 250, loading is made manually (loading height: 130 cm)

Second Step : Grinding

After closing the safety door of the vessel, the operator launch the automatic process. Waste are thinly grinded by rotating blades up to 1500 RPM during 5 to 7 min. The temperature is rising up to 70°C with the friction of the blades with a volume reduction of the waste up to 85%. Waste are then very thin and unrecognizable (legal constraint).

Third Step : Disinfection to a safe microwaves process

Waste are exposed to a temperature over 110°C by High Frequency micro-wave generator and maintained at this temperature during 20 minutes in order to inactivate the waste.

The process and the results have been tested by Pasteur Institute and IRM (French organization) under the supervision of the French Ministry of Health to validate the disinfection efficiency of the Sterilwave systems (according to the French norm NFX-30503 and international recommendations regarding alternative technologies STAATT).

The results are conform with a microbial inactivation up to 8log10.

Fourth Step : Unloading

At the end of the cycle, the treated waste are automatically unloaded in a container located at the bottom of the system. The trap door of the vessel is opening and the treated waste are automatically transferred (waste are pushed out by the rotating blades to be sure the vessel will be empty at the end of the cycle)

Final waste are:

Inert: up to 8 log10 microbial inactivation

Thinly grinded waste with a volume reduction up to 85%

Dry and unrecognizable with a weight reduction up to 25%

Fifth Step: Traceability/Operations tracking

The entire Sterilwave process is controlled by a PLC. The software manages the waste treatment cycle, ensuring the required time and temperature parameters for treatment and ensuring safety of the system and operators.

The system ensure a full tracking of each cycles. Printed ticket after each cycle

Daily record with all operations done can be collected with a SD memory card.

Connection through an IP address to remotely track the maintenance operations.

Several language available up to the end-user preference.

Comparison – The Best alternative to autoclave and incineration solutions

Thanks to the use of microwave technology, Sterilwave is the easiest and most efficient way to manage on-site clinical waste.

Hospital waste management

Most State Governments and Federal Agencies impose laws and regulations for the management of hazardous waste. This specific infectious waste contaminated with pathogen agents is also known as bio-medical or regulated medical waste and must be identified as such (coloured bag) then transferred by a specific carrier in order to be treated and/or incinerated.

Each Health Care center has to respect and comply with the laws and regulation.

Medical waste, also known as clinical waste, normally refers to waste products that cannot be considered as general waste, produced from healthcare premises, such as hospitals, clinics, doctors’ offices, veterinary hospitals and labs.

Regulation of medical waste management is imposed in order to protect:

Patients

Health care professionals

Employees of waste management companies

Environment

Incineration of bio-medical waste is the most common option for destroying substances representing a risk to human health and safety. However, incineration produces quantities of metals, dioxin and other potentially hazardous substances which present a problem for public health and environmental regulation. Moreover a special carrier must be used (and paid) to collect and transfer the hazardous medical waste to the incineration plant.

In response to this problem, Bertin Technologies has developed STERILWAVE, an innovative onsite medical waste processing to transform up to 440L / 35kg of hazardous medical waste per cycle into municipal waste. The 40 min’ cycle requires only 10? operator input and will reduce the waste volume by 80% and weight by 20%.

The Sterilwave onsite system provides the following key benefits:

No more storage areas of hazardous waste

Less intermediate handling = fewer risks

No more specific carrier to transfer the hazardous medical waste (so less expensive)

Automatic process

Eco-friendly, the system requires only a 400 V AC electrical power supply:

Cost effective, the Sterilwave is an innovative onsite solution for the treatment of hazardous medical waste.