Abstract
The plastics components of a random sample of waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) from small household appliances were identified and sorted. Moreover, by taking into account the practical needs for applications demanding medium to less severe restrictions from the standpoint of end-use characteristics, the mechanical and thermal properties are investigated for the four most used plastics in the EU, including acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene (ABS), styrene-acrylonitrile (SAN), polystyrene (PS) and polypropylene (PP), as well as for a mixture resulting on the basis of corresponding EEE market evaluations. The obtained results show that in the case of these materials, separated prior to processing, even if a minor decrease arises from the standpoint of thermal properties due to inherent degradation induced by processing, the problem is the decline of different mechanical properties. In fact, this appears to be the net result of different morphologies of components – the essentially amorphous-like nature of ABS, SAN and PS, and the semi-crystalline component (PP). Accordingly, the loss in mechanical properties was lower for the elastic modulus, higher in case of impact strength and intermediate for the tensile strength, when the components and the resulting blend properties are compared. Keywords: WEEE, plastics, recycling, thermal properties, mechanical properties