Body parts to be burnt in plan to convert hospital waste to energy

A PLAN to produce electricity by burning body parts and organs has created uproar in a small Sussex town.

The proposals to turn medical waste including bandages, blood products and nappies into clean energy has confounded locals who fear it will create poisonous air and noise pollution.

But Michael Burns, 62, the local businessman behind the concept, insisted that rather than being a modernday Frankenstein, he has “a lead on the world” in creating clean energy from a combination of plastic and biomass.

Rather than burning the waste in an incinerator, his company, Medipower, plans to use a gasification process whereby the waste is heated to produce a synthetic gas which is ignited and converted into thermal energy.

“We have tried to treat waste as a precious fuel like gasoline or diesel,” he said. “We want an invention that helps the environment, not kills it, and our technology is the best out there. It’s all about the emissions.”

Mr Burns, a father of five, studied chemical engineering and spent years working for motor companies including Daewoo and Ford before branching out on his own. With the help of a government loan and investments totalling several million pounds, he developed a heat exchange method that won a valuable US patent.

His discovery that burning plastic alongside biomass creates a “pretty good fuel” led him to start looking at hospital waste.

“Medical waste from theatres has a high level of plastic and a high level of biomass from things like paper tissues, gowns and nappies,” he said.

“We get paid by the ton to take the waste and believe we will be able to hugely undercut the companies currently being paid by the NHS to take this waste to landfill.”

Although the permit application lists “body parts and organs including blood bags” among materials to be incinerated, Mr Burns insisted “there are no arms and legs” and that at worst it might include “the odd fingernail”.

Medipower has two factories in Newhaven, East Sussex, one of which contains a prototype unit that has been in operation for three years combusting waste from the sea. If it gets the permit, the plant, the first of its kind, will burn 10.5 tons of hospital waste a day, creating enough thermal energy to power hundreds of homes.

Medipower’s application to Lewes District Council for a permit has attracted more than 200 objections.

“A lot of people look at it and think it’s an incinerator but don’t understand what it is,” said Mr Burns. “That’s the biggest problem. It’s been a little bit hijacked, which is sad. People hear the word incinerator and then add body parts and get the wrong idea. But this is our take-off point. We have a lead on the rest of the world when it comes to recycling and clean energy.”