Wrapping up retardants
4 Oct 2004
One of the major barriers to increased recycling of plastics from waste electrical equipment (as required by the new EU WEEE Directive) is the need to extract obsolete brominated fire retardents from polymers before they can be re-used.
The problem is that no commercial process to extract these brominated fire retardents from WEEE polymers is currently available.
For that reason, Ealing, UK-based Axion Recycling is to lead a consortium of companies and institutions in a 19-month project to conduct practical trials of alternative extraction processes, then select the optimum solution and prepare a design for a commercial scale plant.
This is an important piece of work because certain older brominated fire retardents are now banned from use in new electrical equipment because they may contain toxic impurities. Modern brominated flame retardants, on the other hand, are believed to be non-toxic.
Axion's collaborators in the WRAP-funded project include ICER (Industry Council for Electronic Recycling), EBFRIP (European Brominated Fire Retardents Industry Panel), APME (Association of Plastics Manufacturers in Europe), Solvay SA, the Dead Sea Bromine Group, Critical Processes as well as Sony UK, British Telecom and Brother UK.
The environmental impact assessments of the processes will be carried out by White Young Green.
