In recent years, there has been extensive research into using pyrolysis to convert toxic
brominated plastics into safe, bromine free fuels. However, there has been little investigation of
the polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDE) that are present in the pyrolysis oils. PBDEs are
brominated flame retardants that are extremely toxic and are difficult to analyse owing to the
existence of 209 different congeners. In this work, the authors have investigated the PBDEs
present in the pyrolysis oil of high impact polystyrene which contained decabromodiphenyl ether
as a flame retardant. The plastic was pyrolysed in a fluidised bed reactor and the resulting oil was
subjected to a rigorous clean-up procedure to remove interfering compounds before the PBDEs
were quantified using gas chromatography–mass spectrometry. It was found that the most
prominent PBDEs in the oil were 3-monoBDE, 4-monoBDE, 3,49-diBDE, 3,39,4-triBDE and
2,29,4,49,5,69-hexaBDE. The lesser brominated PBDEs were more prevalent than the more heavily
brominated PBDEs
