Reuse of waste printed circuit boards as fillers in polypropylene composites

ABSTRACT Printed Circuit Boards (PCBs) are the most valuable parts of e-waste because they have a considerable amount of metals with recovery potential. Recycling processes aimed at recovering metals from PCBs have aroused great interest recently. However, there is a fraction of this waste that is not utilized and has uncertain destination, e.g. the non-metallic fraction and the dust generated during metal recovery processes. The focus of this study was to employ the powder generated in the mechanical comminution, granulometric, magnetic and electrostatic separation processes of controller and temperature indicator PCBs of cold rooms to obtain polypropylene (PP) matrix composites with distinct PCBs powder content, 5, 10 and 20% in weight. The sample was collected during the mechanical comminution processes. The materials were weighed, mixed, injection molded and later characterized using tensile tests, Shore D hardness, infrared spectroscopy, thermogravimetric analysis and scanning electron microscopy. Results of the tensile and hardness tests showed properties slightly superior to pure PP, except for strain at break, which was reduced up to 2.7 times for the sample with 20% of residue. In all, the development of composites using the powder of PCBs was considered feasible for applications where tensile strength, stiffness and hardness are important, even for a large amount of residue added (20%).