Thermal behavior of vehicle plastic blends contained acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene (ABS) in pyrolysis using TG-FTIR

As important plastic blends in End-of-Life vehicles (ELV), pyrolysis profiles of ABS/PVC, ABS/PA6 and ABS/PC were investigated using thermogravimetric-Fourier transform infrared spectrometer (TG-FTIR). Also, CaCO3 was added as plastic filler to discuss its effects on the pyrolysis of these plastics. The results showed that the interaction between ABS and PVC made PVC pyrolysis earlier and HCl emission slightly accelerated. The mixing of ABS and PA6 made their decomposition temperature closer, and ketones in PA6 pyrolysis products were reduced. The presence of ABS made PC pyrolysis earlier, and phenyl compounds in PC pyrolysis products could be transferred into alcohol or H2O. The interaction between ABS and other polymers in pyrolysis could be attributed to the intermolecular radical transfer, and free radicals from the polymer firstly decomposed led to a fast initiation the decomposition of the other polymer. As plastic filler, CaCO3 promoted the thermal decomposition of PA6 and PC, and had no obvious effects on ABS and PVC pyrolysis process. Also, CaCO3 made the pyrolysis products from PA6 and PC further decomposed into small-molecule compounds like CO2. The kinetics analysis showed that isoconversional method like Starink method was more suitable for these polymer blends. Starink method showed the average activation energy of ABS50/PVC50, ABS50/PA50 and ABS50/PC50 was 186.63 kJ/mol, 239.61 kJ/mol and 248.95 kJ/mol, respectively, and the interaction among them could be reflected by the activation energy variation.