Effect of solar radiation on disinfection of infectious biomedical wastes.

The present investigation is an attempt to study the effect of solar treatment for disinfection of biomedical wastes with and without lime stabilization process. The laboratory experiments were conducted using box type solar disinfector with and without lime. The study involves the determination of parameters, such as COD, total solids, volatile solids, electrical conductivity, alkalinity and microbial colony count at different stages of disinfection. The reduction percentages of COD and alkalinity were 77% and 76% respectively for solitary solar disinfection, whereas for solar disinfection with lime stabilization COD and alkalinity were reduced to 65.79% and 70.87% respectively. The microbial colony count due to only solar disinfection was reduced from 15 x 10(11) microbes/mL to 9 x 10(7) microbes/mL whereas due to solar disinfection with lime stabilization, the microbial colony count reduced to 8 x 10(5) microbes/mL within 6 hrs. There was a notable reduction in the parameters, which suggests that pathogens of biomedical waste can be effectively destroyed using solar disinfection with lime stabilization process.