Combustion and Pyrolysis of Electronic Waste: Thermogravimetric Analysis and Kinetic Model

Abstract

In the present work, thermogravimetric analysis (TG) was employed in order to investigate the thermal degradation of electronic waste under pyrolysis and combustion conditions. Three materials, namely keyboard, telephone wire, and printed circuit board (PCB) were studied and compared with each other. TG experiments were performed at a heating rate of 10°C/min up to 700°C. Arrhenius model was used to obtain the kinetic parameters from the TG data. From the model, the Arrhenius parameters such as activation energy and the pre-exponential factor were determined for each step in pyrolysis and combustion process. The results indicated that the thermal stability sequence for the three studied species can be described as: keyboard>PCB>telephone line. The activation energy order at the first process of combustion is in agreement with that of pyrolysis’ first step, but the activation energy at the first process of combustion is little more than that of the pyrolysis’ first step.