Abstract
The high global production of electric and electronic equipment increases in the same manner the amount of the waste that needs to be recycled. Special attention is given to the plastics recycling from the waste in addition to the metals recovery that brings economic advantages. Considering that the plastic amount contains about 80% polystyrene polymers, the paper presents a recycling study of this fraction as reinforcing agent for a styrene-butadiene block copolymer. In order to reduce the melt viscosity, some of the composites were extended with paraffin-naphthenic �heavy white oil�. The blends were characterized by mechanical testing, thermal and dynamo-mechanical analysis. Based on the resulted properties, it can be concluded that the extended and reinforced composites can be used as material for shoe soles.
Highlights
The high global production of electric and electronic equipment increases in the same manner the amount of the waste that needs to be recycled
Taking into account that the polymers Tg increases with the molecular weight, the first transition corresponds to the polystyrene domains with a low molecular weight (20.000 g/mole) components of styrene-butadiene block copolymers (SBS) and the second transition is attributed to the mixture of waste of electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) polystyrene polymers with molecular weight higher than 100.000 g/mole
Analyzing the variation of mechanical properties depending on the WEEE recovered polystyrene fraction, it can be seen that the styrene-butadiene block-copolymer extended with 25% paraffin-naphthenic oil and reinforced with 15-25% polystyrene waste corresponds in terms of mechanical properties for use as masterbatch for the production of shoe soles
Summary
The reinforcing study was achieved using a star styrenebutadiene block-copolymer (SBS D1184 CM supplied by Kraton) with a 30 % polystyrene content and a molecular mass of 270.000 g/mole (determined by GPC). The polystyrene fraction used as reinforcing agent was separated from WEEE by extraction at room temperature using tetrahydrofuran (THF) as solvent. The dissolved fraction represents about 78% of the total collected polymers and had the following composition: PSt 10 %, ABS 48 %, HIPS 15 %, other polymers 5 %. An important fact to mention is that the paraffin-naphthenic oil is incompatible with the polystyrene phase, being distributed only in the polybutadiene phase where it acts as an extender [16-18]
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