Fuel generation from waste of electrical and electronic equipment

Abstract

quotAlong with new advances in technology and economic developments, global waste electrical and newlineelectronic equipment (WEEE) generation is also rising rapidly. Waste printed circuit board newline(WPCBs) are one of the most complex components of WEEE and particularly challenging to newlinerecycle due to highly heterogeneous composition. WPCBs contain 30%, energy rich plastic part newlinewhich can be pyrolyzed to extract energy potential. Present study aims at recovering fuels from newlineWPCBs through catalytic pyrolysis. Shredded non-metallic fraction which resulted after physical newlineseparation of metals of WPCB was used as a feed while ZSM-5 and Ca(OH)2 were used as newlinecatalysts. Different concentrations of catalysts and their proportional mixture were combined for newlinepyrolysis studies. newlineMass degradation in thermogravimetric curves were divided into three zones. Zone 1 accounted newlinefor moisture and volatile removal from feed, zone 2 accounted primary degradation of epoxy newlineresins into BPA and TBBPA while zone 3 was associated with secondary and tertiary newlinedegradation of BPA and TBBPA into smaller compounds like phenols and styrene. Kinetic newlineparameters were determined using model fitting methods. Coats and Redfern method was newlinesuitable for all zones. Thermal pyrolysis had activation energy and order of reaction of 33.53 newlinekJ/mol and 0.9 for zone 1, 405.81 kJ/mol and 2.8 for zone 2 and 67.96 kJ/mol and 1.2 for zone newlinethree, respectively. ZSM-5 was observed to increase activation energy slightly up to 44.18 newlinekJ/mol in zone 1, significant reduction to 141.64 kJ/mol in zone 2 and moderately increase again newlineto 97.98 kJ/mol in zone 3. Order of reactions were proportional to activation energy. newlineThermal and catalytic pyrolysis experiments were conducted on in-house developed fixed bed pyrolyser. GCMS analysis indicated that oils majorly composed of phenol and phenolic newlinecompounds, while other compounds like PAHs, aromatic, oxygenated and nitrogenated newlinecompounds were also present. Organobromides, triphenyl phosphates, BPA and TBBA were not newlinefound in oil. ZSM-5 was more selective tow