A Cost Optimization Model for Hazardous Medical Waste Management in Portugal
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A Cost Optimization Model for Hazardous Medical Waste Management in Portugal João Maria de Souza Coutinho Nunes de Almeida Dissertação para a obtenção do Grau de Mestre em Engenharia Civil Júri Presidente: Prof. Augusto Martins Gomes Orientadores: Profª Cristina Marta Castilho Pereira Santos Gomes Prof. João Torres de Quinhones Levy Vogal: Profª Ana Barbosa Póvoa Maio 2010 AKNOWLEDGEMENTS This dissertation represents, not only the work done in order to write the following pages, but also the conclusion of several years of study and the overcome of quite a few obstacles. It would not have been possible to thoroughly complete this cycle with both the help of those who contributed to the conclusion of this dissertation and of those whose support along this cycle was extremely helpful. Firstly I would like to thank my thesis coordinators: Prof. João Levy for helping me during the whole process of developing this final project, and specially Profª Marta Gomes who apart from helping and supporting the construction of this thesis, also gave me the opportunity to participate in new challenges such as the IO2009 conference. I would also like to thank Eng. Luis Cordovil, Engª Ana Pinela and Drª Sofia Sá for the promptness with which they cleared my doubts and supplied the necessary data to go on with my work. I express my appreciation to Prof. Alexandre Gonçalves for re-explaining the basics of cartography and coordinates systems. I am grateful to my friend and colleague Francisco Meneses for the tutorials given on how to work with ArcGis and also for patiently clearing all my subsequent doubts on the use of that software. As I said before this is the end of a long cycle which completion would not have been possible without the support of my friends and colleagues Bernardo Guimarães, Pedro Sanches, António Dominguez, Pedro Fino, Stefano Nigra, José Medeiros, Diogo Araújo, Mariana D’Orey, Teresa Montalvão, Tomás Eiró and Miguel Ferreira. In that perspective I would also like to thank my friend and colleague Inês Almeida for all the course notes and summarized syllabus that helped me through the Engineering degree. Finally I run short of words in expressing my gratitude to my family, for the unwavering support along all these years and for the several opportunities given to expand both my academic and personal horizons. i RESUMO A gestão de resíduos sólidos hospitalares é uma área muito particular da gestão de resíduos sólidos pois este tipo de resíduos está sujeito a regras específicas referentes ao tratamento ou eliminação dos mesmos. Segundo a legislação Portuguesa e Europeia, as operações relativas à gestão de resíduos deverão ocorrer preferencialmente em território nacional de forma a reduzir os movimentos transfronteiriços dos mesmos. Dado que a produção de resíduos hospitalares perigosos (RHP) já ultrapassou a capacidade de incineração, existe uma necessidade urgente de expandir a capacidade instalada. Em Portugal os RHP estão divididos em dois grupos, os que são de incineração obrigatória e os que têm de ser descontaminados antes de poderem ser transportados para aterros. As operadoras, licenciadas para tais actividades, trabalham com ambos os grupos de RHP ao mesmo tempo, logo o sistema de gestão de RHP deverá ser tratado como um só. Neste trabalho desenvolve-se uma ferramenta (modelo em programação linear inteira mista – MILP) que forneça uma solução optimizada em termos de custos onde constem a localização das diferentes infra-estruturas relacionadas com a gestão de RHP assim como a determinação dos fluxos de resíduos entre diferentes nós. O objectivo desta ferramenta será fornecer ao decisor, num período de tempo aceitável, uma solução optimizada em termos de custo. Este modelo será aplicado a dois cenários. No primeiro não serão consideradas as infra- estruturas existentes, sendo que as localizações de todos os tipos de infra-estrutura serão variáveis do modelo. No segundo apenas serão variáveis do modelo a localização das incineradoras, a localização de todos os outros tipos de infra-estrutura serão parâmetros do modelo. Palavras-chave: Programação linear inteira mista (MILP), Gestão de resíduos hospitalares perigosos, Modelos para a localização de infra-estruturas e Optimização de custos. ii ABSTRACT The hazardous medical waste management (HMW) is a very particular field of solid waste management as it requires following specific rules in order to correctly eliminate and treat the hazardous waste. According to Portuguese and European legislation the waste management operations should occur preferably in national territory, thus reducing inter-borders waste-flows. This poses a problem as the Portuguese incineration capacity for HMW is lower than the actual production; as a result there is an urgent need to expand such capacity. HMW in Portugal can be divided into two groups, roughly those that have to be incinerated and those that need to be decontaminated before being transported to landfills. The HMW companies work with both groups at the same time; therefore the HMW management system should be treated as one whole system instead of two separate ones. In this work a tool is proposed (Mixed Integer Linear Programming - MILP - Model) which will optimize in terms of cost, both the location of the facilities related to HMW management as well as the allocation of waste between the different nodes. The aim of this tool is to present the decision maker, in a reasonable amount of time, the optimal solution to the problem. This model will be applied to two different scenarios. The first one will consider none of the existing infrastructure; the locations of all the facilities will be treated as model variables. The second one will only locate the incinerator(s); all the other facilities’ location will be considered as model parameters. Keywords: Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP), Hazardous medical waste management, Facility location model and Cost optimization. iii INDEX 1. INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................................................1 2. MEDICAL WASTE ..................................................................................................................4 2.1 Definition ........................................................................................................................4 2.2 Requirements for handling and disposal of Group III and IV ............................................5 2.3 Producers .......................................................................................................................6 2.4 Medical waste management companies ..........................................................................7 2.4.1 AMBIMED ...............................................................................................................7 2.4.2 AMBITRAL ..............................................................................................................7 2.4.3 CANNON ................................................................................................................8 2.4.4 SUCH .....................................................................................................................8 2.4.5 TRATOSPITAL .......................................................................................................8 2.4.6 Location of the HMW management infra-structure in Portugal..................................8 2.5 Quantifying hazardous medical waste in Portugal............................................................9 2.5.1 Main aspects to be considered ................................................................................9 2.5.2 HMW production in Portugal for 2006 ......................................................................9 2.5.3 HMW production in Portugal for 2016 .................................................................... 13 2.5.4 Market value of HMW in 2016 ............................................................................... 16 3. THE MEDICAL WASTE MANAGEMENT PROBLEM ............................................................ 18 4. LITERATURE REVIEW ........................................................................................................ 23 4.1 Solid waste management models .................................................................................. 23 4.2 Facility location models ................................................................................................. 25 4.2.1 The different approaches to facility location models ............................................... 25 4.2.2 Static/Deterministic location models ...................................................................... 26 4.2.3 Dynamic location models....................................................................................... 28 4.2.4 Stochastic location models .................................................................................... 28 4.2.5 Hierarchical facility location models ....................................................................... 29 4.3 Facility location models applied to solid waste management ......................................... 30 4.3.1 General overview of the facility location models applied to SWM ........................... 30 4.3.2 The location-allocation models applied to solid waste management ....................... 32 iv 4.4 Conclusion .................................................................................................................... 36 5. MODEL FORMULATION .....................................................................................................