| Tertiary Recycling of End-of-Life electronic equipment such as computer monitor casings and disk drives is considered in this project. This research aim's at finding new recycling processes that have a possibility for economic scale-up. The present work was divided into two parts. The first one dealt with the investigation of two mixed-plastics streams provided by MBA Polymers (MBAP). One of the streams consisted of fines (MBAP-1), and the other was a non-separable stream, MBAP-2. These solid polymer streams from MBAP were reacted in a Tubular Reactor inerted with helium. The overall objective of these reactions is to determine the process parameters (Reaction Temperature and Pressure) required in order to achieve maximum oil yield. The reaction process parameters are the reaction temperature (375°C, 400°C, 425°C and 450°C) and the reaction time (15min, 30min and 45min). Tetrahydrofuran (THF) and hexane are used as solvents to separate the non-gaseous products which are partitioned into THF-Insoluble, THF-Soluble Hexane-Insoluble and Hexane-Solubles while the gaseous products are analyzed using a gas chromatograph (GC). (Abstract shortened by UMI.)... |
