Clinical Waste Incinerators
Orange and yellow bagged waste — dressings, PPE, giving sets, suction liners — destroyed where it arises.
Infectious waste is the bulk of what a hospital throws away that it cannot throw away. Dressings, swabs, gloves, gowns, giving sets and suction liners fill carts faster than any other healthcare stream, and every one of them is waiting on a collection that has to arrive. A LitBurn destroys them on the site that produced them, at the permitted condition, with the run logged.
Four Models,
One Solution
The entry point to the LitBurn range. A 3.3 m³ primary chamber and three burners give continuous 125 kg/h destruction in a footprint that fits a standard yard bay, which makes it the usual choice for a single-site operator replacing skip hire rather than a multi-site waste contract.
The most specified unit in the range. Chamber volume rises to 5.5 m³ for 250 kg/h continuous throughput while the external width grows by only 230 mm over the LBI-125, so sites that outgrow the smallest unit rarely have to rework the slab or the building line.
A 9.6 m³ chamber — nearly double the LBI-250 — for medium-scale industrial waste destruction. At this size most operators pair the unit with heat recovery, because the thermal output during a full shift is large enough to displace a dedicated water heater.
The largest LitBurn: a 16.2 m³ chamber running 500 kg/h continuously. Specified where waste arrives faster than a batch unit can clear it — large manufacturing sites, industrial estates, and operators consolidating several smaller waste contracts onto one machine.
Which Model
Fits Your Volume
Pick a model to see what it clears in a day of clinical & infectious waste.
A community hospital, hospice or clinic group: a tonne a shift covers a week of infectious waste with the unit running one day in five.
18 01 03* on the permit
Infectious clinical waste is 18 01 03*, hazardous, and has to be named at permit application along with any 18 01 09 medicinal contamination in the yellow stream. A general waste permit does not reach it, and adding it at application is far easier than varying afterwards.
Declare the halogenated condition
Giving sets, IV bags and suction tubing are PVC. A cart-fed infectious stream will routinely carry more than 1% halogenated organic content, which sets the secondary-chamber minimum at 1,100°C. Declare it rather than defaulting to the 850°C baseline.
Segregation stays a clinical duty
HTM 07-01 colour coding decides what may enter this charge. Cytotoxics, medicinally contaminated sharps and anatomical waste each have their own route; an on-site unit removes the collection, never the sorting done at the point of use.
Storage before the charge still counts
Waste held between the ward and the unit is still stored clinical waste: secure, signed, drained, vermin-proof and fire-assessed. Destroying it the same day shortens the hold, it does not exempt the store from the standard it was built to.
Why Burn It
On Site
4 things change on the day this stream stops leaving the site.
The collection stops being a single point of failure
Clinical waste arrives whether or not the contractor does. When capacity in that market tightens, the waste stacks up inside a live hospital and every mitigation is worse than the last. A permitted unit on site takes that dependency off the risk register.
Storage limits stop governing the operation
Internal stores have a capacity, a duration limit and a fire loading, and they are sized on a collection frequency being kept. Destroying daily arisings on the day they arise means the store holds a day, not a backlog waiting for a vehicle.
Every consignment removed is a risk removed
Waste destroyed on site never becomes a UN3291 road movement, never reaches a transfer station and never sits in someone else's yard under your duty of care. The chain shortens to the length of a corridor.
95% of the volume stops attracting a gate fee
Clinical waste is charged by weight or by container on a tariff well above general waste. Ash at 3–5% of input mass is the only fraction that still leaves the site, and it leaves under an ordinary transfer note.
Dual-chamber unit, 1,100°C capable
Primary chamber running 850–1,200°C with a secondary chamber holding flue gas above 850°C for two seconds. Clinical charges are PVC-rich — IV bags, giving sets, suction tubing, sterile packaging — so where the stream carries more than 1% halogenated organic content the secondary minimum rises to 1,100°C, and the unit holds it as built rather than as an upgrade.
Front dual-door loading
The LBI range is charged through a front dual door at floor level. Wheeled 770-litre clinical carts, rigid-bodied sharps bins and red-lidded anatomical containers go in at the height they arrive at, which is what keeps the last handling step in a clinical waste route a push rather than a lift over a rim.
What Ships
With The Unit
Identical whichever stream it is specified for. The operating procedure changes; the machine does not.
Dual-chamber unit, 1,100°C capable
Primary chamber running 850–1,200°C with a secondary chamber holding flue gas above 850°C for two seconds. Clinical charges are PVC-rich — IV bags, giving sets, suction tubing, sterile packaging — so where the stream carries more than 1% halogenated organic content the secondary minimum rises to 1,100°C, and the unit holds it as built rather than as an upgrade.
Front dual-door loading
The LBI range is charged through a front dual door at floor level. Wheeled 770-litre clinical carts, rigid-bodied sharps bins and red-lidded anatomical containers go in at the height they arrive at, which is what keeps the last handling step in a clinical waste route a push rather than a lift over a rim.
IP6X control panel with cycle logging
PLC control with chamber thermocouples, interlocked charge door and a time-stamped temperature record per run. For clinical waste that record is what turns a claim of destruction into evidence of it — the condition an infection control audit or a permit compliance check asks to see.
Burner set and fuel train
Configured for natural gas, LPG, diesel, biofuel or hydrogen, with three burners across the LBI range. Fuel choice is a site decision; the combustion condition is identical whichever is specified. Wet loads — anatomical waste, suction liners, fluid-heavy dressings — draw more burner time, not a different machine.
Coretex refractory lining
Monolithic castable lining rated for the full temperature range and for sustained running at the top of it. Replaceable in service rather than requiring the shell to be scrapped with it, which matters on a unit running shifts against a daily arisings curve rather than single burns.
Stack, dispersion data and commissioning
Stack supplied to the height your site-specific dispersion assessment calls for — hospital sites usually carry the tightest one on this list, with wards, intakes and neighbours all inside the assessment — plus the emissions data pack the permit application references, on-site commissioning, a witnessed first run and operator training.
How One Burn Runs,
Start To Finish
One run is one countable event, reconciled against a manifest and evidenced by a time-stamped temperature log.
One Cycle,
Start To Finish
Adds 18 01 03* to the permit and a declared halogenated condition, because this is the PVC-heavy stream. Bags are charged sealed from the cart, so nothing is opened, sorted or re-bagged between the ward and the chamber.
Orange for infectious, yellow where the waste is also contaminated with medicines. The colour decides the lawful route, and it is decided at the bedside — before anything is wheeled anywhere.
Filled bags go into the wheeled cart and the cart goes to the charge door. No decanting, no re-bagging, no sorting step where a tied bag is opened to check what is in it.
The front dual door takes the load at the height the cart arrives at. The unit is already at temperature and is fed while running, so the arisings curve rather than a cycle time governs the day.
Primary combustion reduces the load; the secondary chamber holds the gases above 850°C for two seconds, or 1,100°C where the PVC fraction pushes the charge past 1% halogenated organic content.
Residue is 3–5% mineral ash. The run log, the cart count and the ash weight are what the destruction is evidenced against — and what an audit will ask for rather than a certificate.
What You Can Burn —
And What You Can't
One run takes the whole stream without pre-sorting. What must never enter it is a short, hard list.
Yes: accepted in a run
No pre-sorting between these
- Dressings, swabs and wound careGauze, dressings, bandages, swabs and packs contaminated with blood or body fluids, charged in the bag they were tied into at the bedside.
- Single-use PPEGloves, aprons, gowns, masks, visors and overshoes from isolation and standard precautions — the highest-volume item in the stream since 2020 and the one that fills carts fastest.
- Giving sets, tubing and cathetersIV lines, giving sets, catheters, drains and connectors. This is the PVC fraction: it is why the halogenated condition is declared for this stream rather than assumed away.
- Suction liners and fluid-bearing disposablesSuction canisters and liners with solidifier, wound drainage bags and stoma products. Wet loads draw more burner time; they do not need a different unit.
- Dialysis and theatre consumablesDialysers, lines, drapes, gowns and single-use theatre disposables, contaminated in ordinary use and bagged at the point of use.
- Contaminated packaging and sterile wrapSterile film, wraps and trays that entered the clean field and cannot be recycled once they leave it. Bulky, light, and the reason chamber volume decides the model.
No: never charged
Not a permit question — these stay out
- Cytotoxic and cytostatic wastePurple-lidded waste is hazardous under 18 01 08* and needs its own permitted scope and segregation. It is specified in full on the pharmaceutical sector, not folded into an infectious charge.
- Category A infectious substancesUN2814 and UN2900 material carries containment requirements that sit outside a site clinical waste route entirely. It is inactivated under the arrangements the containment level demands, not carted to a yard.
- Pressurised containers and aerosolsMetered-dose inhalers, aerosol cans and gas cylinders are sealed vessels under heat. They have their own return route regardless of which bag they were found in.
- Radioactive waste from nuclear medicineWaste bearing radionuclides is controlled under radioactive substances legislation and decays or is disposed of under that regime. An environmental permit for clinical waste does not touch it.
Can you legally burn clinical & infectious waste on site?
Technically, yes: the chamber destroys almost everything on the accepted list at 850–1,200°C, and capability is rarely the constraint. Legally is a separate question. What your site is allowed to burn is set by your environmental permit from the Environment Agency, SEPA or NIEA and the waste codes written into it. The never-charged list is different again: those materials are out of scope for the unit or governed by a direction, and no permit wording brings them back in. Send us the codes you hold, or the ones you expect to apply for, and we will tell you which of this list they cover before anything is specified.
Send us your waste codesWhat size incinerator for a hospital producing 3.5 tonnes of infectious waste a week?
Arithmetic on published model figures, not a customer reference. Your numbers go through the same steps.
How This
Was Worked Out
3,500 kg a week against the LBI-250's 250 kg/h = about 14 hours of running, or two shifts, leaving 105–175 kg of mineral ash at 3–5% and no clinical waste collection to depend on. Clinical waste is light and bulky — a 770-litre cart rarely holds more than 40–50 kg. Count carts against the 5.5 m³ chamber as well as kilograms against the rating, because volume runs out first on this stream.
105–175 kg a week
0
5.5 m³
2.9 t
Send your daily or weekly arisings and we will confirm the model, the run time and the permit route.
Related Products
& Services
Complementary equipment and engineering services for your process.
Clinical & infectious waste Questions
Answered against the published figures for the models specified for this stream, not a generic range sheet.
Infectious clinical waste is material contaminated with blood, body fluids or a known pathogen — dressings, swabs, gloves, aprons, gowns, giving sets, catheters, suction liners, dialysis consumables and the packaging around all of it. Under HTM 07-01 it is bagged orange where it is infectious alone, and yellow where it is also contaminated with medicines. The distinction matters here: orange may lawfully go to alternative treatment, yellow may only be incinerated. The destruction condition is the Industrial Emissions Directive one — 850°C to 1,200°C in the primary chamber, flue gas above 850°C for two seconds in the secondary. This stream is where the 1,100°C question bites: IV bags, giving sets and suction tubing are PVC, and a cart of them will carry more than 1% halogenated organic content. Declaring that at application is straightforward; discovering it at a compliance visit is not. Nothing is opened. A clinical waste bag is tied at the point of use and charged as it is, from the cart it travelled in. That is not a convenience — the whole risk model of a clinical waste route rests on the container staying closed, and an on-site unit that required sorting before charging would be worse than the collection it replaced. What comes out is 3–5% mineral ash and a time-stamped run record. The volume reduction is what most sites notice first — a week of carts becomes a bin of ash — but the record is what survives an audit, because it states the temperature the waste was actually held at rather than the one a certificate asserts.
3,500 kg a week against the LBI-250's 250 kg/h = about 14 hours of running, or two shifts, leaving 105–175 kg of mineral ash at 3–5% and no clinical waste collection to depend on. Clinical waste is light and bulky — a 770-litre cart rarely holds more than 40–50 kg. Count carts against the 5.5 m³ chamber as well as kilograms against the rating, because volume runs out first on this stream.
Not always. Orange-bagged infectious waste may lawfully be sent for alternative treatment such as autoclaving. Yellow-bagged waste — infectious and contaminated with medicines — may not, and nor may anatomical waste or medicinally contaminated sharps. Splitting your stream along that line before sizing anything tells you which part of it is a legal requirement and which part is a cost decision.
No. A tied clinical waste bag is charged as it is, straight from the cart. Opening it to check the contents would reintroduce the exposure the colour-coding system exists to prevent, and it would make an on-site unit worse than the collection it replaces. Segregation happens at the point of use or not at all.
850°C to 1,200°C in the primary chamber with flue gas held above 850°C for two seconds in the secondary — and 1,100°C where the charge carries more than 1% halogenated organic content, which a PVC-heavy infectious stream routinely does. The LBI range holds the higher condition as built rather than as an option.
Residue is 3–5% of input mass, so roughly 95% of what you charge stops being a disposal cost. The visible change is bigger than the number suggests: a week of 770-litre carts leaves a bin of mineral ash, and only that ash still leaves the site under a transfer note.
That is where the continuous rating earns its keep. A batch unit clears one charge a day whatever happens; an LBI is fed while running, so a surge in gowns and masks becomes more hours rather than a queue of carts. Size on the surge you have actually seen, not on the quiet-week average.
No. Once the load has been held at 850°C for two seconds there is no infectious agent and no recognisable clinical item left — the residue is mineral ash and inert metal, leaving as ordinary waste under a transfer note. Where hazardous material was in the permitted scope, agree the residue classification with the regulator at application stage.
Ready to
Incinerate?
Send the stream, the volume and the site constraints. We will confirm the model, the permit route, and what the specification has to say to satisfy the regulator.
- The collection stops being a single point of failure
- Storage limits stop governing the operation
- Every consignment removed is a risk removed
- 95% of the volume stops attracting a gate fee