Curing kinetic analysis of phenolic resin filled with nonmetallic materials reclaimed from waste printed circuit boards

Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) was used to study the effects of two types of nonmetallic materials (NM) reclaimed from waste printed circuit boards on the cure behavior of commercial phenolic resin. Kissinger and Kissinger–Akahira–Sunose (KAS) models were used to compare the cure kinetic parameters of phenolic resin without filler and filled with NM fillers. A reduction in the activation energy (E) was obtained when phenolic resin filled with NM fillers using Kissinger model. KAS model showed that sharp decrease of E values for PF/NM filler systems were observed at the early stages of the cure process (α < 0.1). Eα for phenolic resin without filler remained at constant values (112 kJ/mol) in the α range of 0.4–0.8, while the Eα function suffered a linear downward dependence in the α range of 0.15–0.9 when phenolic resin was filled with NM fillers.