Mechanical CAD Design and Implementation of an Intelligent Medical Waste Management Technology

Medical waste management is still a significant public health and environmental issue, especially in medical centers, which produce a large amount of potentially harmful waste. Manual waste disposal and segregation methods can create the potential for contamination and can be time-consuming, wasteful, and work prone to human error. In this study, we developed an integrated technology that reduces direct human contact in the process of medical waste management, detecting, identifying, and sorting medical wastes using mechanical computer-aided design (CAD) and implementation. An integrated system consisting of sensor-based waste detection, microcontroller-based decision-making, and automated mechanical actuators was used to create a detailed three-dimensional (3D) computer-aided design (CAD) model of the automated sensor-based sorting bin. Sensors measure relevant properties of the waste stream, and the microcontroller analyzes the information from the sensors and triggers the right mechanical sorting device for the appropriate category of waste. For experimental evaluation, three categories of medical waste were selected, namely, medical plastic waste, medical metallic waste, and medical non-metallic disposable waste. Through repeated experiments, all 120 waste samples were detected, identified, and categorized correctly, with five waste samples miscategorized; that is 95.8% accuracy for categorizing the waste. FEA was also conducted on the assembly to validate the structural properties of the main chassis under operating loads. The results obtained from the simulation showed that the chassis deforms to a maximum of 1.2 mm when subjected to the load of 500 N. Additionally, it was verified that the automated mechanical operation is reliable with a reaction time of approximately 0.8 s through prototype testing. The proposed medical waste management system aims to offer a secure, scalable, and cost-effective approach that contains, streamlines, and lowers employees' direct interaction with medical waste.