Recycling Of Thermosetting Epoxy Resin And WPCBs Into Antion Exchange Resin

Nowadays with the rapid development of social economy, electronic products are frequently upgraded, which continuously brings great pressure to the environmental protection and resource recovery. The printed circuit board is a very important part of electronic products and the thermosetting epoxy resin(TEPR) is the main component. At present, China has become the world’s largest country that produces thermosetting epoxy resin of printed circuit board, however the waste printed circuit broads(WPCBs) has caused many environmental problems. The quantity of WPCBs reaches 50 million tons per year, and with the rapid development of the modern industry, The generation of WPCBs and other electronic waste will be increasing and thus the recycling methods become more and more important. The general way to recover the WPCBs that generated by the industry is to use the physical, chemical, incineration and other methods, however, the plastic substrate is directly burned or buried. It is not only a waste of resources, but also causes a lot of pollution. Therefore, the study of recycling WPCBs and disposal methods can not only get a reasonable use of the waste but also reduce environmental pollution and protect the environment, which provides a more rational protection for human health, and can widely be used.This article uses WPCBs(mainly thermosetting epoxy composites, TEPR) as raw materials, to prepare anion exchange resin by chloromethylation and quaternization. Ion exchange capacity(IEC) of ion exchange resin and the regeneration performance were studied. Based on the principle of response surface methodology, using Design-Expert software to establish the mathematical model, the relevant factors of the preparation of anion exchange resins were tested to optimize the design, and determine the optimum conditions for preparing anion exchange resin.Experiments results show that, anion exchange resin has a high ion exchange capacity. The Design Expert software optimization to get the optimum conditions as follows: reaction temperature is 750 ℃, reaction time is 7h, The dosage of 37% HCL, ZnCl2 and paraformaldyhyde is 197 ml, 12 g, 11 g respectively..The thermosetting epoxy resin(aTEPR), which cured in labortory, was preparated into anion exchange resins(Q-aTEPR) 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 discussed and analysed in this paper. Experimental results show that the Langmuir adsorption isotherm can better reflect the exchange process and deduced Cr(VI) of the activation energies was: 3.51 kJ mol-1.This paper proposes a new method of disposaling thermosetting epoxy resin composites and the waste, which can not only reduce the environmental pollution but also broaden the sources of anion exchange resin preparation. This paper provides a basis for utilization of waste resin which has a signficant meaning for the development of circular economy.