Recovery of PC/ABS from WEEE plastic shred by the CreaSolv® process

Waste of electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) contains a series of valuable substances, which are used as secondary raw materials. There are however some WEEE components that are currently not recycled due to technical and economic hurdles. This paper presents results indicating that pre-treatment of mixed shred of WEEE plastics by x-ray transition (XRT) and density sorting enables an effective pre-concentration of the target polymers ABS and PC/ABS. XRT provides a fraction of halogen free polymers, whereas a sink and float approach enriches ABS and PC/ABS further to a purity of 60 – 90%. Subsequent purifying of the target polymer was performed by the solvent-based CreaSolv® Process. FT-IR spectroscopy identifies the product clearly as ABS and PC/ABS. Other material characteristics of recycled PC/ABS are well comparable to virgin and conventionally recycled grades of PC/ABS.