Novel recycling of nonmetal particles from waste printed wiring boards to produce porous composite for sound absorbing application

Nonmetal materials take up about 70wt% of waste printed wiring boards (WPWB), which are usually recycled as low-value fillers or even directly disposed by landfill dumping and incineration. In this research, a novel reuse of the nonmetals to produce porous composites for sound absorbing application was demonstrated. The manufacturing process, absorbing performance and mechanical properties of the composites were studied. The results show that the high porous structure of the composites leads to an excellent sound absorption ability in broad-band frequency range. Average absorption coefficient of above 0.4 can be achieved by the composite in the frequency range from 100 to 6400Hz. When the particle size is larger than 0.2mm, the absorption ability of the composite is comparable to that of commercial wood-fibre board and urea-formaldehyde foam. Mechanical analysis indicates that the porous composites possess sufficient structural strength for self-sustaining applications. All the results indicate that producing sound absorbing composite with nonmetal particles from WPWB provides an efficient and profitable way for recycling this waste resource and can resolve both the environment pollution and noise pollution problems.