Abstract
Chemical recycling is an environmentally friendly method, which is often used for the recycling of plastics included in waste electric and electronic equipment (WEEE), since fuels and secondary valuable materials can be produced. Brominated flame retardants (BFRs) are usually added into these plastics to reduce their flammability; but they are toxic substances. The aim of this work is to examine the thermal behaviour and the products obtained after pyrolysis of polymer blends that consist of acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene (ABS), high-impact polystyrene (HIPS), polycarbonate (PC) and polypropylene (PP) with composition that simulates real WEEE, in the absence and presence of a common BFR, tetrabromobisphenol A (TBBPA), in order to investigate its effect on pyrolysis products. Blends were prepared via the solvent casting method and the melt-mixing in an extruder; it was revealed that the latter method may be a better choice for blends preparation, since it did not affect the products obtained. The chemical structure of each polymeric blend was identified by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR). Thermal degradation of the blends was evaluated by thermogravimetric (TG) experiments performed using a thermal analyser (TGA) and a pyrolyser for evolved gas analysis (EGA). It was observed that blends had a similar behaviour during their thermal degradation; and in most cases, they followed a one-step mechanism. Pyrolysis products were identified by the pyrolyser combined with a gas chromatographer/mass spectrometer (GC/MS), and comprised various useful compounds, such as monomers, aromatic hydrocarbons and phenolic compounds that could be used as chemical feedstock. Furthermore, it was found that TBBPA affected products distribution by enhancing the formation of phenolic compounds and on the other hand by resulting in brominated compounds, such as dibromophenol.
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11 August 2021
A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-15862-7
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Funding
This work was partially funded by the Hellenic Foundation for Research and Innovation under a Ph.D Fellowship grant (Number 853) to M.-A. Charitopoulou.
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MAC and DA contributed to the study conception, methodology and design. MAC performed material preparation, data collection and analysis. LP performed the XRF experiments and analyzed the results. Supervision: DSA. MAC wrote the first draft of the manuscript and all authors reviewed and commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final version of the manuscript.
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Charitopoulou, .A., Papadopoulou, L. & Achilias, D.S. Effect of brominated flame retardant on the pyrolysis products of polymers originating in WEEE. Environ Sci Pollut Res 29, 29570–29582 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-15489-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-15489-8