Assessment of Thermogravimetry for Organic Content Analysis in Printed Circuit Boards Comminution Fines

Secondary resource stream can be very composite in constitution and the procedure for reliable chemical and physical analysis therefore unconventional. Thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) has been mentioned for organic constituent analysis of end-of-life printed circuit board (PCB). The applicability is hereby examined. Experimental TG/DTG with oxygen and nitrogen atmospheres were carried out on PCB comminution fines. The resulting TG plot does not show sharp inflexions to enable distinct identification of any constituent; there were diverse material particles in the sample and many reactions with gain and loss in mass occur simultaneously over the whole temperature range. The DTG plot however indicates some peaks, which by matching known thermal data of polymeric materials to the temperatures at the DTG peaks, some qualitative indications can be made. This will be confirmable by complementary techniques such as infra-red spectroscopy. This is the qualitative extent to which TG is considered applicable for this composition.