Steam‑oxygen Gasification of Surgical Mask Waste in an Updraft Fixed Bed Gasifier System and Its Life-cycle Assessment

Surgical mask waste (SMW) is one of the challenges left by Corona pandemic and other possible epidemics in the future. Gasification treatment is one of the most eco-friendly solutions that are usually used to convert biomass into flammable-rich gas with high economic outcome. This paper aims to study the potential applications of using steam‑oxygen gasification in treating SMW and environmental impact. The experiments were carried out in an updraft fixed bed gasifier system with operation capacity 1 kg/h using two different types of SMW (3-ply face and FFP2/N95) at 900 °C, air–fuel equivalence ratio of 0.19, and at a different steam-to-carbon molar ratio (S/C: 1 and 2). Under these circumstances, the SMW decomposed into saturated vapour in gasification chamber followed by condensed tar fraction in the sampling unit, then the soot was separated from syngas product using a ceramic filtration. The properties of the formulated syngas, tar, and soot products were analysed using GC-FID, FTIR, and SEM. Finally, the environmental performance of treating both types of SMW using gasification technology was investigated using a life-cycle analysis (LCA) tool based on the S/C ratio that can achieve the maximum abundance of hydrogen (H 2 ) in syngas. The results showed that syngas was the major component of the gasification products with a high content of H 2 , especially at S/C = 1 with abundance estimated at 40.6% (3-ply, 17.44 MJ/kg) and 38.3% (FFP2, 15.97 MJ/kg). Also, some benzene-rich tar (82–118 g/m 3 ) and fullerene-like soot particles (53–75 g/h) were received. LCA results indicated that SMW composition did not have a significant effect on the assessment. While, the total scores of the gasification scenario (0.0029 for FFP2 masks and 0.0031 for 3-ply masks) were very small compared to the scores of the pyrolysis (0.0355) and incineration scenario (0.0128). Also, the gasification scenario proved a higher performance compared with incineration practice, especially in terms of the Global Warming, with 76% reduction. Based on that, gasification process has a higher potential in treatment of SMW. Graphical Abstract