Recycling Of Thermosetting Epoxy Resin And WPCBs Into Cation Exchange Resin

Nowadays with the rapid development of social econmy, electronic products are frequently upgraded, which continuously brings great pressure to the environmental protection and resource recovery. The printed circuit boards is the important component of electroic products and the thermosetting epoxy resin(TER) is the main component of them. At present, China has become the world’s largest country producing thermosetting epoxy resin of printed circuit board and the waste printed circuit broads(WPCBs) has been resulted in environment pollution and destroyed. WPCBs reached 50 million tons per year, and with the rapid development of information industry, WPCBs and other electronic waste generation will be increasing and the recycling methods are the most important. WPCBs generated by the industry in general recover the metal through physical, chemical, incineration and other methods, however, been directly PCB landfill plastic substrate. It is not only a waste of resources, but also a lot of pollution on the environment. Therefore, the study of recycling WPCBs and disposal methods is not only getting a reasonable use of the waste but also can reduce environmental pollution and protect the environment, which provid a more rational protection for human health, and broad application prospects.This article uses WPCBs(primarily is thermosetting epoxy composites, TER) as raw materials, prepared cation exchange resin reactionwith sulfonating agent. Ion exchange capacity(IEC) of ion exchange resin, the regeneration performance testing were studied. Based on the principle of response surface methodology, using Design-Expert software to establish the mathematical model test, the relevant factors of the preparation of cation exchange resins were tested to optimize the design, and determine the optimum conditions for preparing cation exchange resin. The ion exchange resin have an excellent exchange capacity of exchanging Cu(II), Ca(II) and Zn(II) and other metal ions. They can be used in water softening, plating waste liquid treatment and other flieds.Experiments results show that, TER was sulfonated by concentrated sulfuric acid into ion exchange resin which has a high ion exchange capacity. The Design Expert software optimization to get the optimum conditions as follows: reaction temperature is 85 ℃, reaction time is 360 min, concentrated sulfuric acid concentration is 94%.The thermosetting epoxy resin(a TER), which cured in labortory, was preparated into ion exchange resins(S-a TER) and tested by Thermogravimetric Analysis(TGA), Fourier Transform Infrared spectroscopy(FT-IR), Elemental Analysis(EA), X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy(XPS).The principle of ion exchange, the ion adsorption exchange isotherm and the adsorption kinetics were discussion and analysis in this paper. Experimental results show that the Langmuir adsorption isotherm more accurately reflect the exchange process. The ion exchange adsorption is pseudo-two equation by fitting its data and deduced Cu(II) and Ca(II) of the activation energies were: 21.18 and 48.53 k J mol-1.This paper proposes a new method of disposaling thermosetting epoxy resin composites and waste, which not only reduce environmental pollution but also broadens the preparation sources of on exchange resin. This paper provide a basis for utilization of waste resin which has a signficant meaning for the development of circular economy.