A comprehensive characterization of End-of-Life mobile phones for secondary material resources identification

In this paper a full recognition of the different materials and valuable metals constituting mobile phones was performed. To this aim, a sample of 20 end-of-life devices has been dismantled and quantitative and qualitative chemical composition of the individual components was determined. From dismantling operations, it was found that plastics, metals, electronic components, batteries and displays account for 33%, 11%, 23%, 24% and 9% respectively, as a weighted average. Plastic parts of each item were analyzed by spectroscopy and then classified according to the plastic polymer type; it was found that polymeric components of mobile phones were made of five polymers: acrylonitrile-butadienestyrene, polycarbonate, polyurethane, polymethylmethacrylate and silicone. Electronic parts were leached by a twofold aqua regia treatment and the metal composition was determined: 15 elements were identified with concentration >0.2%. On the basis of these results, some considerations about the recycling context of end-of-life mobile phones were performed.