Plastic material composition and separation in waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE)

Abstract

Electronic waste and plastics pollution are of concern and detriment to our environment if not properly dispose or recycled. The global approach in ensuring recyclability of these products/materials has been significant. To combat and reduce the amount electronic waste that ends up in landfill, an eco-friendly manufacturing process alternative are needed to ensure sustainability. This why is efficient sorting and recycling systems needs to be developed. Accurate sorting enhances the recycling system stream. NIR (Near infrared spectroscopy) is often utilized to identified and sort materials with high accuracy.

In this thesis work, two types of electronic waste were sorted and separated (bromine free e-waste and brominated e-waste) by utilizing NIR technique. NIR was able to accurately identify 17 different types of material in both e-waste, which amount to 60 % of the material in the e-waste. The reminder were the unidentified plastics. A nondestructive analytical method SEM-EDS were used to perform the experiment to determine the presence of elements in the electronic waste samples.

The result obtained from the experiment validates the literature review showing the estimate and proportion ratio for the most common plastics used in WEEE, namely, ABS, PC/ABS, PS, PP and PC. All of which has 22 %, 11 %, 10 %, 9 % and 4 % shared proportion respectively. The sample analyzed by scanning electron microscope - Energy dispersive spectroscopy (SEM-EDS) showed consistent element concentration of carbon (C), aluminum (Al), silicon (Si) and titanium (Ti) in both e-waste. Whilst the brominated e-waste shows constant present bromine (Br) and heavy metal element antimony (Sb) as second highest element.