- WEEE as a mine of technopolymers: from exhausted equipment to selected flows
- WEEE sorting technologies: NIR, XRF and densimetry to isolate technical polymers
- Automotive and technopolymers: dashboards, bumpers, reinforced polyamides and high-quality scrap
- Closed-loop automotive recycling projects: from defective component to certified compound
- Household appliances and large white goods: bodies, frames and supports as a source of ABS and PC/ABS
- From the breakdown of the complex product to the technical batch of secondary raw materials
- Management of critical additives and flame retardants: REACH, RoHS and OEM compliance
- Integration between WEEE, automotive, and household appliance supply chains: future scenarios for recycled technical compounds
From Complex Waste to High-Grade Secondary Raw Materials: How WEEE, Vehicles and Large Appliances Feed Advanced Recycling of Engineering Polymers
Essay. Recycling of Post-Industrial Plastics and Engineering Polymers. Chapter 3: WEEE, Automotive and Household Appliance Chains
3.1 The WEEE chain: from electronic product to source of engineering polymers
If you look at a WEEE collection centre on any given day, the impression is that of a large chaotic landscape: old monitors, printers, vacuum cleaners, televisions, routers, laptops, mixers, irons, small household appliances piled on top of one another. At first glance it is a dump of obsolete objects, a disordered mix of metals, glass and plastics. From a technical perspective, however, it is a mine of engineering materials: housings in technical ABS, frames in PC or PC/ABS, internal supports in PBT and polyamides, diffusers and covers in PMMA, mechanical components in POM, technical elastomers for cables and gaskets.
Strictly speaking, this chain is not post-industrial, because the devices have completed a use cycle in the hands of the end user. However, the structure of WEEE treatment introduces a kind of “second industrialisation” of the waste. The appliances once again become the object of a process: they are collected by category, weighed, recorded, sent to plants equipped with dedicated lines for dismantling, shredding and separating the components. At this stage, waste becomes matter again: plastics, from simple shells of objects, become fractions to be identified, extracted and regenerated.
For an operator focused on engineering polymers, the first step is learning to read the “code” hidden in the devices.
A flat-screen monitor or television very likely contains housings in PC/ABS, sometimes with flame retardants; an old CRT may have outer shells in ABS, internal panels in impact-modified PS, electronic supports in PBT; a printer combines outer casings in ABS with internal parts in POM and polyamides; a small appliance combines ABS cases with load-bearing components in PA6, while telecommunications devices frequently use PC or PC/ABS for their enclosures....© Reproduction Prohibited
