Degradation of Styrenic Plastics during Recycling: Accommodation of PP within ABS after WEEE Plastics Imperfect Sorting

• Main Authors: Charles Signoret, Pierre Girard, Agathe Le Guen, Anne-Sophie Caro-Bretelle, José-Marie Lopez-Cuesta, Patrick Ienny, Didier Perrin
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2021-04-01
• Series: Polymers
• Subjects: mechanical recycling; impact resistance; WEEE; polymer compatibilization; design of experiments; surface response methodology
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4360/13/9/1439

With the development of dark polymers for industrial sorting technologies, economically profitable recycling of plastics from Waste Electrical and Electronical Equipment (WEEE) can be envisaged even in the presence of residual impurities. In ABS extracted from WEEE, PP is expected to be the more detrimental because of its important lack of compatibility. Hence, PP was incorporated to ABS at different rates (2 to 8 wt%) with a twin-screw extruder. PP was shown to exhibit a nodular morphology with an average diameter around 1–2 µm. Tensile properties were importantly diminished beyond 4 wt% but impact resistance was decreased even at 2 wt%. Both properties were strongly reduced as function of the contamination rate. Various potential compatibilizers for the ABS + 4 wt% PP system were evaluated: PPH-g-MA, PPC-g-MA, ABS-g-MA, TPE-g-MA, SEBS and PP-g-SAN. SEBS was found the most promising, leading to diminution of nodule sizes and also acting as an impact modifier. Finally, a Design Of Experiments using the Response Surface Methodology (DOE-RSM) was applied to visualize the impacts and interactions of extrusion temperature and screw speed on impact resistance of compatibilized and uncompatibilized ABS + 4 wt% PP systems. Resilience improvements were obtained for the uncompatibilized system and interactions between extrusion parameters and compatibilizers were noticed.