INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES Volume 2, No 4, 2012

© Copyright 2010 All rights reserved Integrated Publishing Association

Research article ISSN 0976 – 4402

Thermal plasma treatment of mobile phone waste under reduced condition

Biswajit Ruj
Thermal Engineering Group, CSIR-Central Mechanical Engineering Research Institute
Durgapur-713209, West Bengal, INDIA
biswajitruj@yahoo.co.in
doi: 10.6088/ijes.00202030121

ABSTRACT

Primitive recycling or disposal of cell phone waste to landfills and incinerators causes
irreversible environmental damage by polluting water and soil, and contaminating air. In this
work, the treatment of mobile phone wastes by thermal plasma under reducing condition has
been investigated. During the process, the combustible reformed gas was recovered. The
experimental results show that gaseous by-products are of CO, H2 and hydrocarbons (CxHy).
Generation of hydrogen gas of high concentration is from the hydrogen of the plastic part of
the cell phone waste. Formation of hydrocarbons is also from the carbon and hydrogen part of
the cell phone waste. CO2 generation is almost below the detection limit. No significant other
toxic gases such as NOx and H2S were observed. The effect of magnetic separation of the
mobile phone waste was also investigated which not only affects trace metal concentration,
but also gaseous by-products.

Keywords: Mobile phone waste; Thermal plasma; Syngas

1. Introduction

The problem of safe disposal of waste viz. plastic waste, municipal solid waste (MSW),
electronic waste (e-waste), mobile phone waste, old used tyre etc. together with the
increasing cost of petroleum products, has encouraged research on the possibility of their
conversion into useful forms of energy or chemical products. From a chemical point of view,
these wastes form a right choice for gasification or pyrolysis as these wastes have high
calorific value and simple chemical constituents of primary carbon and hydrogen.

This study area is becoming a growing concern and issue due to enormous amounts of mobile
phones waste being generated around the world. Mobile phone is an indispensable service
facilitator, however, recently disposal and recycle of the cell phone becomes a significant
problem since the potential life span of a mobile phone (excluding batteries) is over 10 years
but due to the technological and fashion obsolescence most of the users upgrade their phones
around four times during this period (Jan and Kim 2010; Ongondo and Williams 2011).
Mobile phones are made up of plastics, metals, ceramics, and trace other substances. In
general, a wireless phone handset consists of 40% metals, 40% plastics, and 20% ceramics
and other trace materials.

The unique electrical insulating properties of plastics and their strength, stress resistance,
flexibility, and durability make plastics important materials for use in electronics. In Western
Europe, plastics consumption by the electrical and electronic industry was 2.78 million
tonnes in 2002 (APME 2003). The quantity of plastic waste from the electrical and electronic
industries is estimated to increase to approximately 1.13 million tonnes by 2005 in Western

Received on April 2012 Published on May 2012 2400

 Thermal plasma treatment of mobile phone waste under reduced condition

Europe (APME 2000). There are three types of recycling processes for plastics: Chemical,
Mechanical and Thermal (Kang and Schoenung 2005). Mobile phone waste contains
thousands of components made of toxic chemicals and metals like lead, cadmium, chromium,
mercury, polyvinyl chlorides (PVC), brominated flame retardants, beryllium, antimony and
phthalates (Scharnhorst et al., 2005; Scharnhorst, W., 2006;.Fisher et al., 2005; Nnorom and
Osibanjo 2009; Kasper et al., 2011).

The disposal of cell phones thus needs to be managed in an environmentally sound way to
minimize releases into the environment and threat to human health. When recycled
responsibly, the metals can be put back into circulation, decreasing the need for new metal
mining. In this work, the treatment of mobile phone wastes by a thermal plasma system in
reducing atmosphere for generation of syngas and metal recovery from the slag/residue has
been investigated. The effect of magnetic separation of the mobile phone waste was also
investigated which not only affects trace metal concentration, but also gaseous by-products.

2. Method

Cell phone waste was first separated into display and non-display part. After crushing, the
samples were cut into small pieces of around 5 mm size by sheet metal cutting scissor. With a
magnet, ferromagnetic were separated from non-ferromagnetic components. Cell phone
waste was divided into four categories: Display magnetic (dm), display non-magnetic (dnm),
non-display magnetic (ndm), and non-display non-magnetic (ndnm). Their percentages by
weight are shown in Table 1. Magnetic separated parts can be directly recycled since only
ferromagnetic materials are present.

A schematic of the plasma torch type cell phone waste treatment system is shown in Figure 1.
Cell phone waste samples were placed into a 99.8 % pure alumina reactor with maximum
operating temperature of 1950ºC in reducing atmosphere (Beuthe and Chang 1997; Chang et
al., 2008). The ceramic reactor with a diameter of 7.5 cm and depth of 2.6 cm was placed 5
cm below the torch. The sample weights were mostly in between 7 g and 10 g. The thermal
plasma was generated by a DC 10 kW plasma torch and was ejected vertically through the
top of the environmental chamber.

The power was limited to 1.5 kW. Pure argon gas with a fixed flow rate of 35 L/min was
used in order to produce a reducing atmosphere. A constant-voltage power supply, in series
with a resistor bank, was applied to control the power of the plasma torch. K-type
thermocouple was introduced in the environmental chamber to measure the temperature near
the reactor wall. An on-line combustion gas analyzer (Eurotron Greenline 8000) and a
hydrogen gas analyzer (Beacon 200) were installed at the exit of the reaction chamber behind
a heat exchanger. All samples were treated for 30 minutes.

Table 1: Weight percentage of four different mobile phone waste samples

Magnetic separation by weight Non-magnetic separation by weight
(%) (%)

Display 15 85

Non-display (main- 30 70
body)

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 Thermal plasma treatment of mobile phone waste under reduced condition

Resistance
Plasma
Torch

DC Power Environmental Ar
Supply Chamber

Combustion gas analysers

Figure 1: Schematic diagram of the thermal plasma facility

3. Results and discussion

3.1 Solid analyses

Physical analyses including the examination of the appearance of the cell phone waste,
weight reduction after plasma treatment and x-ray diffraction elemental analyses were
conducted. The Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) image of treated cell phone ashes is
shown in Figures 2. Slight melting around the edge of some ash particles was observed.

Figure 2: Cell phone ashes after thermal plasma treatment (argon flow rate: 35 L/min;
treatment time: 30 min; power: 1.5 kW)

Table 2: Weights of cell phone waste samples before and after treatment
Samples Sample weight (g) Weight after treatment (g) Weight loss (%)
dm 7 6.61 5.57
dnm 10 9.30 7.0
ndm 10 9.94 0.6

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 Thermal plasma treatment of mobile phone waste under reduced condition

ndnm 10 9.65 3.5

The weight reduction of the waste samples by plasma treatment is shown in Table 2. The
maximum weight removal of 7 % was achieved for the dnm sample. Weight loss should be in
theory close to 40% as the mobile phone contains 40% plastics and this 40% of plastic should
convert to combustible gas. Plastic part of the mobile phone waste was not fully converted.
Reason may be due to fault in reactor design or may be the gap between the plasma torch and
the sample in the alumina reactor is long (5 cm) or high argon gas flow (35 L/min.) which
may displace the mobile phone waste sample from the centre of the alumina reactor.

From the results of the x-ray diffraction (XRD) solid analyses of non-treated cell phone
wastes in Figure 3 follows that the display unit contains a higher percentage of carbon and the
non-display unit a higher percentage of metals. Thermal plasma treatment will convert carbon
and other volatile materials into gaseous by-products.

Figure 4 shows the results of the solid analysis of the products remained in the cell phone
ashes by XRD. The results of various samples varied greatly. Hence, the weight percentages
were averaged from four samples. It is observed that the weight percentage of carbon
decreases drastically, while other trace metals and elements are being concentrated in the
solid by-products.

Figure 3: Weight percentage of elements of an original (untreated) non-display non-

magnetic and display non-magnetic cell phone waste

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 Thermal plasma treatment of mobile phone waste under reduced condition

Figure 4: Mean weight percentage of elements of four treated cell phone waste samples
3.2 Gaseous by-products analyses

The present investigation was carried out in a reducing atmosphere. The exhaust gas was
analyzed by an on-line combustion gas analyzer, a hydrogen gas analyzer and Fourier
transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR). Since the plastic part of the cell phone waste was
converted to gases, it is necessary to investigate the gas content of the outlet to prevent toxic
gases from being emitted into the environment. Ten gases (CO, CO2, NO, NO2, NOx, SO2,
H2S, CxHy, O2 and H2) were analyzed. The system was purged by argon gas prior to the
experiment. Since no oxygen was applied to the system, pyrolysis started. The concentrations
of CO, CxHy and H2 during thermal plasma treatment are presented in the Figures 5, 6 and 7,
respectively.

70
dm
60 dnm
ndm
ndnm
50
[CO] in ppm

40

30

20

10

0
0 10 20 30 40
Time (mins)

Figure 5: Concentration of CO as a function of treatment time during thermal plasma

treatment (argon flow rate: 35 L/min, treatment time: 30 min, power; 1.5 kW)

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 Thermal plasma treatment of mobile phone waste under reduced condition

300
dm

250 dnm
ndm
ndnm
200

[CxHy] in ppm
150

100

50

0
0 5 10 15 20 25 30
Time (mins)

Figure 6: Concentration of CxHy as a function of treatment time during thermal plasma

treatment (argon flow rate: 35 L/min, treatment time: 30 min, power; 1.5 kW)
1400

1200

1000
[H2] in ppm

800 dm
dnm
600 ndm
ndnm
400

200

0
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35
Time (mins)

Figure 7: Concentration of H2 as a function of treatment time during thermal plasma

treatment (argon flow rate: 35 L/min, treatment time: 30 min, power; 1.5 kW)

Carbon and hydrogen in plastic were converted mainly into CO, H2 and CxHy. Concentration
of CO2 was below detection limit in reducing atmosphere. Minor concentrations of NO, NO2,
NOx and SO2 were emitted. As the display parts contain a higher percentage of carbon,
higher concentrations of CO and CxHy were generated during the treatment as well.

Figure 7 shows that the emission of H2 reaches the detection limit of the hydrogen gas
analyzer of 1200 ppm after 8 min of treatment. Since CO, H2 and CxHy are combustible
gases and have their own heating values; they are also referred as syngas and can be used for
the generation of electricity. However, the gas should be desulfurized prior to the use of
electricity generation. FTIR spectroscopy indicates the presence of C2H2, C2H4, C8H8 and
C6H6O as hydrocarbons in the exhaust gas. The mass numbers of the group (94>66>65) and
(104>78>51>103>77) were observed during on-line measurements, while the group
(149>167 >57>71>43) was detected after cooling the by-product gas. The results let one
assume that two of the major by-products might be liquefied C8H8 and C6H6O in the on-line
by-product gas. Heavier molecules were observed after cooling the exhaust gas.

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4. Conclusion

Plasma treatment of cell phone waste in reducing atmosphere generated gaseous components
such as H2, CO and CxHy, which are combustible gases. The metals in the cell phone waste
were concentrated in solid by-products. Complete decomposition of plastic parts in cell
phone waste is expected after optimization of the system. The system provides energy
recovery with volume reduction of cell phone waste, reduction of toxic gases and potential
recovery of metals.

Acknowledgements

Author is thankful to CSIR, New Delhi, India and McMaster University, Canada for
supporting this research project under the Raman Research Fellowship Program.

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