Monitoring of WEEE plastics in regards to brominated flame retardants using handheld XRF

- Specification of an empirical factor for conversion from bromine to PBB and PBDE.
- The handheld XRF device was validated for this particular application.
- A very large number of over 4600 pieces of monitor housings was analysed.
- The recyclable fraction mounts up to 85% for TV but only 53% of PC waste plastics.
- A high percentage of pieces with bromine contents of over 50,000 ppm was obtained.

This contribution is focused on the on-site determination of the bromine content in waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE), in particular waste plastics from television sets (TV) and personal computer monitors (PC) using a handheld X-ray fluorescence (XRF) device. The described approach allows the examination of samples in regards to the compliance with legal specifications for polybrominated biphenyls (PBBs) and polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) directly after disassembling and facilitates the sorting out of plastics with high contents of brominated flame retardants (BFRs). In all, over 3000 pieces of black (TV) and 1600 pieces of grey (PC) plastic waste were analysed with handheld XRF technique for this study. Especially noticeable was the high percentage of pieces with a bromine content of over 50,000 ppm for TV (7%) and PC (39%) waste plastics. The applied method was validated by comparing the data of handheld XRF with results obtained by GC-MS. The results showed the expected and sufficiently accurate correlation between these two methods. It is shown that handheld XRF technique is an effective tool for fast monitoring of large volumes of WEEE plastics in regards to BFRs for on-site measurements.