Episode Summary
In this episode of WasteWise, Daniel Nelsen explores how medical and research facilities are moving beyond incineration to adopt safer, greener waste disposal. Daniel explains why many organizations now see traditional burning as too risky and costly, with added concerns about emissions and incomplete destruction of hazardous materials. He details how alkaline hydrolysis offers a contained, efficient alternative for treating tissue and protein-based waste—breaking down even hard-to-kill pathogens and avoiding harmful byproducts.
Daniel shares how alkaline hydrolysis works on both small and large scales, supporting everything from benchtop research to state diagnostic labs handling whole animal carcasses. He outlines how the technology turns waste into sterile liquid or solid forms, cutting transport risks and streamlining compliance with biosafety standards. Daniel also compares long-term costs, highlighting the maintenance challenges of incinerators and the predictable performance of tissue digesters.
The conversation closes with a look at growing adoption worldwide. Daniel describes how new research models and distributed labs drive demand for flexible, onsite systems. He points to real-world cases, like recent projects in South Africa, where a shortage of incineration capacity has led governments and private groups to seek new solutions for safe, sustainable waste management.
BioSAFE Engineering
Daniel A. Nelsen
Senior Director of Business Development
BioSAFE Engineering
Daniel guides facilities in adopting sustainable, non-burn waste treatment solutions like alkaline hydrolysis for biosafety, cost control, and compliance.
Key Insights
Moving Beyond Incineration for Safer Waste Management
Traditional incineration methods for medical and research waste create serious challenges, from high infrastructure costs to health and environmental risks. Burning waste produces harmful emissions, and incomplete combustion can leave behind dangerous materials. Facilities face extra hurdles when they lack the space or resources for compliant incinerators. A shift is underway toward contained, non-burn systems that reduce airborne contaminants, simplify compliance, and lower long-term operating costs. By keeping hazardous waste contained and eliminating the need for constant high-temperature operation, these systems protect workers, communities, and the environment. This move to better waste management isn’t just about reducing risk—it also helps organizations keep up with growing biosafety standards and public expectations for responsible operations.
Distributed Research Drives Demand for Flexible Waste Solutions
The rise of smaller, distributed research operations—especially in biotech and synthetic biology—has changed how organizations manage waste. Instead of centralizing disposal in large facilities, more labs now need onsite systems that can keep up with varied and unpredictable waste streams. Compact tissue digesters and scalable alkaline hydrolysis units give these labs the autonomy to destroy hazardous materials quickly and safely, without waiting on overloaded or distant incinerators. As research accelerates and spreads out, the need for local, efficient waste treatment grows. Flexible solutions support this shift, helping organizations stay compliant, reduce logistics burdens, and maintain public trust in biosafety. This trend points to a future where safe, sustainable waste management is within reach for labs of any size.
Alkaline Hydrolysis Delivers Clean, Scalable Waste Treatment
Alkaline hydrolysis offers a robust alternative to incineration, breaking down tissue and protein-based waste into sterile, manageable byproducts. This process uses heat, pressure, and an alkaline solution to fragment proteins and genetic material, ensuring even hard-to-kill pathogens are destroyed. The resulting liquid or solid byproducts are easy to handle and pose less risk during transport and disposal. Systems can be scaled from benchtop units for labs to large vessels that process whole animal carcasses, supporting a wide range of facilities. With no hazardous emissions and a controlled, closed environment, alkaline hydrolysis keeps both staff and the surrounding community safer. Its flexibility and reliability make it a strong choice for any operation seeking to modernize waste processing while meeting strict biosafety requirements.
Episode Highlights
Why Incineration Falls Short for Modern Waste Needs
Many facilities have relied on incineration or burial for medical and biohazard waste, but these methods pose health and environmental challenges. Incineration creates harmful emissions and requires expensive scrubbers and infrastructure to operate safely and comply with regulations. For new or expanding sites, installing this infrastructure can be a major hurdle. As waste treatment shifts toward greener, safer methods, more organizations are seeking options that avoid burning and reduce both operational costs and risks to people and the environment. This transition is reshaping the way hospitals, labs, and biomanufacturers approach their waste strategy.
“When you burn things, there’s smoke. There are emission products, and best case, those can be dangerous for human health. Worst case, you might get incomplete combustion and waste materials being spread through the emissions to other populations. So to incinerate this waste in a safe and compliant fashion, you also require scrubbers, which usually looks like some form of stack. At this point, you’re dealing with fairly involved infrastructure that can be fairly challenging and expensive to put in if it doesn’t already exist at your facility.”
Real-World Scalability: From Small Labs to State Facilities
Alkaline hydrolysis systems can be sized for a range of needs, from small benchtop models for research labs to large units capable of treating whole animal carcasses. This flexibility allows smaller clinics to manage irregular waste streams efficiently, while large diagnostic centers can process high-risk materials, such as deer suspected of chronic wasting disease, without extra handling. This scalability helps facilities of any size reduce risk and keep hazardous materials contained, supporting both routine operations and emergency responses.
“At the smaller end, we make a small benchtop size system that can treat about 11 pounds or five kilos per cycle. That’s a good fit for groups doing small tissue sample-based work or have irregular and infrequent amounts of small waste to run. At the larger end, we manufacture 10,000 pound per cycle systems that can fit large carcasses of whole animals. If you’re a state diagnostic center, for example, and they determine that the deer did in fact have chronic wasting disease, they will take that carcass and use a system like the one I’ve just described to dispose of the whole animal, without having to cut it up or process it any more than needed, which reduces incremental risk to the workers at the site.”
Alkaline Hydrolysis: How It Works and Why It Matters
Alkaline hydrolysis uses heat, pressure, and a caustic solution to break down protein-based waste at the molecular level. This process fragments DNA and proteins, leaving behind safe byproducts that are easy to manage. The method is comparable to a pressure cooker, but uses either potassium or sodium hydroxide to raise the pH and facilitate complete breakdown. The result is a sterile liquid or, if dehydrated, a solid block that can be safely sent for final disposal. This closed, controlled approach keeps hazardous materials contained and supports strict biosafety needs in both research and clinical settings.
“At its most basic, you can picture the alkaline hydrolysis process as taking a pressure cooker, adding some lye-based soap and water around your chicken breast, and then closing it and turning it on. You create a pressurized, heated environment within the vessel. You raise the pH by adding caustic. In our process, it’s generally potassium or sodium hydroxide. As time passes, the caustic solution breaks the bonds within the protein structures… and breaks it down into its constituent amino acids, which can then either be sent to municipal treatment as a liquid solution or dehydrated down into a waxy solid block, which can then be safely transported for ultimate disposal somewhere else.”
A Case from South Africa: Meeting Urgent Waste Processing Demands
Issues with incinerator availability can create national bottlenecks for medical waste disposal. In South Africa, the shutdown of key national incinerators has left limited options for safely handling infectious materials. This shortage has pushed both public and private organizations to seek alternatives like alkaline hydrolysis. By adopting these systems, facilities can manage waste onsite or locally, reducing delays and supporting ongoing healthcare and research needs even when central infrastructure is down.
“Several groups we work with in South Africa, where historically this type of waste could only be taken to and processed in one of three national incinerators. One of them is down indefinitely for regulatory reasons. A second is down for an extended period of maintenance and repairs. And the third is overloaded and booked out and not accepting new or diverted waste streams. This has created a real crunch in the country for the ability to process this type of waste quickly and effectively. We’ve been in conversations with the government and a few private players about implementing our systems to alleviate that burden and to provide alternate treatment methods when they’re in a situation such as they are now, where treatment capacity can’t keep up with treatment demand.”
