Owing to the increased amount of electrical and electronic equipment, caused by the usage amount increase and further accelerated the exchange period of hardware, such as personal computer, smart phone, display equipment, and so on, the amount of electronic waste (e-waste) had been largely increased in recent decades. Printed circuit board (PCB) is a main component of electrical and electronic equipment and difficult to be recycled due to its harmful effect caused by the high halogen contents. In addition, the multilayer structure of PCB, consisted with additives, polymers, paper, and inorganics, makes it difficult to use the simple pyrolysis product as fuel or chemical feedstocks.
Therefore, the catalytic pyrolysis was applied to increase the selectivity toward to the value-added products in this study. For the experiments, the tandem micro reactor-gas chromatography/mass spectrometry was used for the simple pyrolysis in the 1st furnace and sequential catalytic upgrading of pyrolysis products in the 2nd furnace. The product distribution produced at different temperature and by the use of different catalysts was analyzed and discussed to optimize the process operation for the chemical recycling of PCB. The obtained results suggested that the product oil quality can be increased by applying catalytic pyrolysis process increasing the yield of aromatic hydrocarbons with the decrease oxygen contents.