Waste mixture composition by thermogravimetric analysis

In this work thermogravimetric analysis is applied to examine pyrolysis of single waste components and their blends in order to determine the composition of an unknown waste mixture. The superposition property is assumed, i.e. the mixture thermal degradation curve is obtained as the sum of the curves corresponding to its constituents. The results show that if blended, the individual components are more clearly recognised from the differential mass loss curves. This allows a better identification of the composition. Inaccuracy in determining the composition increases if interactions occur between components, which is the case for PVC-newspaper blend.