Hospital Wastewater

Medical fluid waste streams contain emerging contaminants and drug compounds, such as hormones, selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors (SSRIs), chemotherapeutic drugs and other pharmaceuticals, blood products, microbial pathogens, and viruses, among others. While many manufacturers already treat water before sending it into the municipal system in the developed world or pay fees to support the extra burden, organizations currently free from this practice are hospitals and clinics with the assumption that the people in the hospital are adding the same burden on the water treatment system as if they were at home. With the advance of medical technology this is no longer true, and the EPA is preparing new regulations that will require hospitals and medical facilities to add waste treatment for their liquid contaminants. In general, hospital wastewaters can contain detectable levels of codeine and other hazardous medical waste contaminants, creating the concern that wastewater treatment plants are not sufficient to completely remove such contaminants.

The TPR4000™ is an innovative system for rendering liquid and other fluid medical (biohazard) waste products sterile and otherwise inert to the environment. Thus, the TPR4000 represents a critical solution to overcoming treatment issues that currently plague the medical field relating to the quality of discharge waters, with applications in hospital, clinic, and military environments. For example, because the TPR system can be implemented as a portable system and consumes low amounts of energy and does not require chemical inputs, it can be ideal for treatment of medical/biological wastes aboard Navy ships prior to discharge overboard and for treating gray and black water wastes in remote locations, both civilian and military, including in disaster relief situations.