Kinetic analysis of thermal degradation of recycled polycarbonate/acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene mixtures from waste electric and electronic equipment

The study of properties in waste polymeric materials is important for a further recycling and eventual reuse. The determination of thermal properties of PC-ABS mixtures obtained from waste electric and electronic equipment (WEEE) by using thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) has been carried out in this work. Kinetic parameters, such as apparent activation energies, have been calculated by using the autocatalytic model, which has shown a good correlation with experimental data. A good agreement between calculated and experimental results was observed for PC-based mixtures. This is an indication that the addition of a high amount of ABS permits the creation of a network formed by elastomeric domains which leads to a general increase in heterogeneity of the mixture.