Brominated flame retardants extraction from waste electrical and electronic equipment-derived ABS using supercritical carbon dioxide

•Temperature and pressure impact on the extraction efficiency were determined.•Granulometry of the sample had an influence on the extraction efficiency.•The maximum extracted bromine was 43.5 ± 0.9% using supercritical CO2.•The addition of ethanol as a co-solvent improved the extraction rate. Persistent organic pollutants such as brominated flame retardants represent a major problem in the end-of-life of polymer materials. This study investigates the extraction of brominated flame retardants (BFR) from real waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) using supercritical carbon dioxide (sc-CO2). Sc-CO2 is a non-toxic solvent which possesses intermediate properties between liquids and gases which confer it high diffusivity and solubility. A batch of WEEE-derived acrylonitrile–butadienestyrene (ABS) was first characterized to determine its bromine and BFR composition which was found to be four times higher than the regulation limit set in 2019. Then, different parameters of the sc-CO2 process such as temperature, pressure, granulometry and the use of a co-solvent were studied to estimate the effect of each one on the BFR extraction efficiency. With the view to determine the recyclability of the treated polymer, the impact of the extraction process on the polymer material was also studied by Thermogravimetric Analysis (TGA), Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC) and Size Exclusion Chromatography (SEC). The extraction process performed on