The University of Birmingham, in the UK, has been awarded €4-million to set up a pilot facility to reclaim rare earth metals from scrap as part of a European Union- (EU-) funded Horizon 2020 project.

The facility will focus on recycling magnets made of neodymium, boron and iron. These are found in hard disk drives, household appliances, electric vehicles and wind turbine generators, and are increasingly important in the transition to a green, low carbon economy. 

Currently, China produces about 80% of the world’s rare earth metals and less than 1% is recycled. The university says that recycling magnets will help protect the supply chain for Europe’s manufacturing base.

The grant will fund the development of a complete European supply chain that is capable of producing 20 t/y of recycled magnets that would otherwise go to landfill.

A robotic sorting line will locate and concentrate the rare earth magnets from scrap at Tyseley Energy Park in Birmingham, recycling facilities will extract the metal alloy powders, and these will be used to manufacture recycled magnets in plants in the UK, Germany and Slovenia.  

An innovative process developed by University of Birmingham researchers will be a key aspect of this new supply chain. 

Previous methods of extracting rare earth metals required disassembly and removal of the magnet. However, the new process uses hydrogen to break down magnetic metal alloys into a powder, which is easily separated from the remaining components, thereby saving time, labour and money. The approach also allows the recycling unit to process multiple items at the same time.

Professor Allan Walton, from the School of Metallurgy and Materials at the University of Birmingham is one of the inventors of the process. He commented: “Rare earth magnets are used in practically every application that uses electricity to produce motion, and underpin industries that are worth more than £1-trillion worldwide.  However, both the price and supply have fluctuated considerably over recent years. This means there is considerable opportunity for cost-efficient technologies, which make recycling viable in the long-term.” 

Recent studies have indicated that magnet recycling could emulate the stainless-steel market, where 25% of demand is met by secondary material.

The EU’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme awarded a grant of €14-million to SUSMAGPRO (Sustainable Recovery, Reprocessing and Reuse of Rare-Earth Magnets in a Circular Economy), an industry-based consortium, which consists of 19 project partners and one associated partner from nine European countries. Of this, €4.696-million was allocated to the University of Birmingham to build a scaled pilot system for hydrogen processing of magnet scrap.