Content area
Full text
A Woodinville, Wash., company says it plans to build a pilot waste-processing plant in Richland that will convert medical waste such as latex gloves, syringes, and intravenous bags into non-hazardous glass.
The company, American Environmental Management Corp., will use vitrification technology that it is receiving under license from the Battelle Memorial Institute, says Rick Taylor, American Environmental's manager of technology transfer.
In general terms, vitrification involves the creation of glass or glass-like substances through heat fusion. However, the process varies greatly, depending on how it is to be applied, Taylor says.
He declines to discuss details about the process that American Environmental will use in its Richland plant because the company is seeking to patent it.
American Environmental, which has statewide authority to haul medical waste, plans to build the waste-processing plant on a five-acre site in the Tri-Cities Science and Technology Park. The plant is expected to begin operating by March 1993, Taylor says. The facility will be capable of processing and converting into glass up to 25 tons of solid...