Rice Method Recovers Antimony From Plastic Waste

Researchers at Rice University report a rapid heating technique that separates antimony and bromide from flame-retardant plastics.

Updated on Nov. 3, 2026 in Materials Science

Photograph of a compact laboratory apparatus with dark carbon sheets clamped between brass contacts beside a pile of gray plastic granules and a glass vessel. — Rice University researchers report a heating method that recovers 90% of antimony from flame-retardant plastic waste in a matter of seconds. AI Illustration. Upload story photo >

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Rice University researchers developed a method that recovers 90% of antimony from flame-retardant plastics using brief electrical heating. The process also converts 83% of the waste's bromide into hydrogen bromide, a useful industrial chemical.

Why it matters

Nearly 39% of global antimony supplies go toward flame-retardant plastics, and electronic waste adds tens of millions of tons of such plastic each year. Conventional heating releases antimony in a hard-to-collect form and creates hazardous organic bromide compounds, which this approach is designed to avoid.

The experiments used plastic from the researchers' own laboratory and succeeded across several flame-retardant varieties, including power-supply housings, circuit boards, and electrical connectors. The team has not yet shown whether the process can be scaled to commercial volumes or at what cost.

The players

Rice University

A private research university in Houston, Texas, whose researchers developed the recovery method.

The details

Researchers held ground-up plastic between two electrically heated carbon-paper sheets and applied several ultrafast heating pulses, a method called isothermal-clamped flash joule heating. A collection area captures antimony as it condenses after evaporation.

Worldwide flame-retardant production is projected to reach 82 million metric tons by 2030.

The Big Picture

The Rice team adapted flash joule heating, a rapid electrical heating technique, to recover antimony and capture bromide from plastic waste. Their work extends that method from its original uses into the recycling of flame-retardant electronic waste.

If commercialized, the process could let recyclers recover antimony and capture bromide from electronic waste rather than discarding them. Consumers would see the effect only indirectly through electronics recycling and material supply.

The takeaway

Recovering valuable metals and chemicals from electronic plastic waste could reduce reliance on newly mined antimony. Watch for follow-up work on whether the process can scale beyond laboratory samples.