Sandra Tostar

An analysis of the composition and metal contamination of plastics from waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE)

The compositions of three WEEE plastic batches of different origin were investigated using infrared spectroscopy, and the metal content was determined with inductively coupled plasma. The composition analysis of the plastics was based mainly on 14 samples collected from a real waste stream, and showed that the major constituents were high impact polystyrene (42 wt%), acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene copolymer (38 wt%) and polypropylene (10 wt%). Their respective standard deviations were 21.4%, 16.5% and 60.7%, indicating a considerable variation even within a single batch. The level of metal particle contamination was found to be low in all samples, whereas wood contamination and rubber contamination were found to be about 1 wt% each in most samples. In the metal content analysis, iron was detected at levels up to 700 ppm in the recyclable waste plastics fraction, which is of concern due to its potential to catalyse redox reactions during melt processing and thus accelerate the degradation of plastics during recycling. Toxic metals were found only at very low concentrations, with the exception of lead and cadmium which could be detected at 200 ppm and 70 ppm levels, respectively, but these values are below the current threshold limits of 1000 ppm and 100 ppm set by the Restriction of Hazardous Substances directive.

Antimony leaching in plastics from waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) with various acids and gamma irradiation

There has been a recent interest in antimony since the availability in readily mined areas is decreasing compared to the amounts used. It is important in many applications such as flame retardants and in the production of polyester, which can trigger an investigation of the leachability of antimony from plastics using different acids. In this paper, different types of acids are tested for their ability to leach antimony from a discarded computer housing, made of poly(acrylonitrile butadiene styrene), which is a common plastic type used in electrical and electronic equipment. The acid solutions included sodium hydrogen tartrate (0.5M) dissolved in either dimethyl sulfoxide or water (at ca. 23°C and heated to ca. 105°C). The metal content after leaching was determined by inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectroscopy. The most efficient leaching medium was the heated solution of sodium hydrogen tartrate in dimethyl sulfoxide, which leached almost half of the antimony from the poly(acrylonitrile butadiene styrene). Gamma irradiation, which is proposed to improve the mechanical properties in plastics, was used here to investigate the influence of antimony leaching ability. No significant change in the amount of leached antimony could be observed.

The Influence of Extrusion Conditions on Mechanical and Thermal Properties of Virgin and Recycled PP, HIPS, ABS and Their Ternary Blends

Abstract A recyclable plastics waste stream of electrical and electronic equipment has previously been found to contain acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene copolymer (ABS, ∼40 wt%), high impact polystyrene (HIPS, ∼40 wt%), polypropylene (PP, ∼10 wt%) and a rest fraction consisting mainly of other styrene-based thermoplastics. In this work, one virgin and one recycled ternary blend consisting of these three components were melt-blended in an extruder to study the influence of processing conditions on the mechanical and thermal properties. The aim of the work has been to understand the inherent compatibility between ABS, HIPS and PP without added compatibilisers, in order to investigate the recycling potential of a real recyclable WEEE plastics fraction. Favourable processing conditions with respect to tensile properties of the virgin blend were found at intermediate screw rotations (40 to 80 min−1) and relatively low barrel temperatures (170 to 220°C), which can be understood from the low onset of thermo-oxidative degradation at 200°C. The recycled blend and recycled ABS, HIPS and PP showed higher stiffness and yield stress, but lower elongation at break than the corresponding virgin materials. The stiffness and yield stress of the blends were found mainly to follow the rule of mixtures of their components while the elongation at break exhibited adverse characteristics indicating incompatibility between ABS, HIPS and PP. The significant variations in the elongation at break of the blends appeared to be due to the ABS component. Differential scanning calorimetry showed an additional melt peak for the recycled blend compared to the virgin blend, otherwise the transitions were similar. The additional peak could be assigned to polyethylene in the PP component. The onset of the thermo-oxidative degradation was found to be at almost 190°C in the case of the recycled blend, which was high considering that it was close to that of the virgin blend and higher than expected from the rule of mixtures of the recycled components.

The Influence of Gamma Irradiation on Repeated Recycling and Accelerated Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene Terpolymer Aging

Electronic waste also referred to as waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) is the fastest growing waste stream in Europe today. The fast exchange pace of mobile phones, television sets and computers create an important need to develop recycling areas to take care of, reuse and recycle all the materials they contain. One common plastic in WEEE is acrylonitrile butadiene styrene terpolymer (ABS). Repeated recycling of plastic causes it to chemically degrade and one of the unwanted effects is the shortening of the polymer chains. Gamma irradiation is known to be able to crosslink polymers and thus reverse the chain shortening. Therefore, the hypothesis of this study is that gamma irradiation of ABS would have a beneficial effect when recycling plastic. Comparative experiments of gamma irradiation has been done according to two methods: A single gamma irradiation (40 kGy) before the extrusion and aging cycles, and the effect of four 10 kGy doses delivered before each of the re-extrusion steps were completed. The results show that gamma irradiation has an impact on the mechanical and rheological properties of ABS. The yield stress increased with irradiation doses of 0, 10, 50 and 400 kGy. The viscosity also increased in the test samples with irradiation doses of 0, 10, 100 and 200 kGy. In the multi-recycling and accelerated aging test, there was a significant reduction in stiffness for the gamma irradiated samples after the second out of four cycles which cannot be fully explained.