REcycling perManent Magnets: an Innovative Approach

forthcoming

Rare earth elements (REE) are crucial for modern technology, used in batteries, smartphones, electric cars, wind generators, industrial robots, military drones, and medical imaging. Demand for REE in permanent magnets is expected to increase tenfold by 2050. The four magnetic elements Pr, Nd, Dy, Tb account for over 90% of the total value of extracted rare earths. The current processing from mining to magnet manufacture involves costly and environmentally challenging steps. Our project, REMMIA, focuses on finding new recycling solutions for the most critical and least recycled materials in the EU, offering a sustainable alternative to harmful mining processes. We aim to develop a novel fundamental approach to improve the efficiency and flexibility of chemical separations needed to recycle REE permanent magnets. By combining 3d-4f and 4f-4f metal separation based on magneto-electrodeposition and antisolvent extraction, we propose a synergistic blending of two innovative approaches to achieve a technological breakthrough on fine local control of oxide nucleation and precipitation. This can be applied to recycling batches of feedstock of variable size, purity, or composition, and ultimately to raw material processing, utilizing about 25% of annual magnet production available for recycling. We expect to recover over 90% of REEs with more than 99% purity in five cycles, compared to 50-100 cycles in conventional methods, thus saving time and money and allowing to recover 25% of EU's annual REE demand from recycled sources. Our consortium is composed of renowned scientists in magnetism, electrochemistry, and hydrometallurgy, and two promising SMEs, which will be key to our success.