WEEE | MATERIALS


European plastics recyclers have developed high-heat rABS compounds for use in coffee machines and other electronic products. By David Eldridge


WEEE recyclers improve performance of ABS


ABS is an important material recovered from the waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) stream. Mechanically recycled ABS has started to appear in new products, but for greater uptake in demanding electronic and automotive applications, WEEE recyclers need to produce rABS compounds that perform as well as virgin counterparts. Their R&D activity in ABS is now bearing fruit with materials launched to deal with high heat and other demands. MGG Polymers in Austria has improved the heat


resistance of its recycled ABS material after two years of development, testing and certification by Underwriters Laboratories (UL). In the new MGG ABS C7515 compound, the mechanical RTI (Relative Thermal Index) values in the Impact category were increased to 80° C and in the Tensile Strength category to 95° C. In 2021, a customer in the coffee machines


market approached MGG Polymers with a request: “The question was whether it would not be possible for the recycled ABS plastic they have been using for years to be even more heat-resistant in the future and to have a higher RTI value,“ says Darko Huskic, the sales manager responsible for the DACH and CEE regions at MGG Polymers. His


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colleague Jose Maria Barraca adds: “At that time, other customers started asking similar questions. This is because the trend in the telecommunica- tions market is for manufacturers to develop smaller and more powerful products. This means that the plastic housing is closer to the heat source during the product’s lifetime. Therefore, it is crucial that we should achieve this important step accord- ing to the official UL standard, which is the most recognised among electronics manufacturers.” In order to improve the RTI values, Philipp Felber,


the Head of Quality and Environmental Manage- ment, and his team started to develop different ABS compound formulations. He says: “Our products have always had an extremely high PCR content. In order to improve the RTI values, we therefore wanted to make changes to the added additives as sparingly as possible. For us and our customers, the mechanical values were in the foreground. We tweaked our ABS formulation, so to speak, until we achieved good results in in-house tests.” Internal testing over six months led onto


collaboration with UL’s German branch. Around 800 test rods made of the new recycled ABS compound were subjected to a 10,000-hour


July/August 2023 | PLASTICS RECYCLING WORLD 41


Main image: MGG Polymers’ recycled ABS C7515


compound has RTI values of 80° C (impact) and 95° C (tensile)


IMAGE: MGG


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