【Paper】

Characterization for Properties of Polystyrene Recovered from Back Cabinets of Waste TVs

Toshiaki Miyanaga
Nippon Steel Chemical Co., Ltd.
（7-21-11 Gotanda, Nishishinagawa-ku, Tokyo, 141-0031 Japan）


Abstract
In Japan, under a law for the recycling of specified home electrical appliances that came into effect in April 2001, the recycling of plastics from recovered home appliance waste（i.e. televisions（TVs）, refrigerators, air conditioners, washing machines）has become a very important issue. Specifically, it is difficult to recycle the plastics found in TVs due to the flame retardant compound in these. The first part of this paper investigates the types of plastic, weight, contents and level of the flame retardant for the back cabinets recovered from waste TVs（TV-BC）. These investigations made it clear that the TV-BC are made of flame retardant polystyrene. Many TV-BC which were recovered from waste TVs at a recycling factory for home electrical appliances were then studied. In this study, we found that the recovered TV-BC had good stability of properties such as specific gravity, melt flow and IZOD and that the recovered TV-BC showed good capability for material recycling.


Key words: material recycling, flame retardant, polystyrene, waste plastics, compounds