A research project at the Clausthal University of Technology relies on the magnetic material neodymium-iron-boron (NdFeB). The aim is to extract from production and consumer waste that contains rare earths with NdFeB. According to the TU Clausthal, there are no industrially implemented recycling processes for these magnets.
Clausthal-Zellerfeld. In order to solve this problem, a consortium consisting of the Chair for Raw Material Processing and Recycling at Clausthal University of Technology (consortium leader) has launched the project “Development of an industrially feasible recycling technology chain for NdFeB magnets”. The “Rare Earth Magnet Recycling” (Semarec) project is funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research with 4 euros through the funding priority “r800000 - Innovative Technologies for Resource Efficiency - Research on the Provision of Strategic Economic Raw Materials” in the “Research for Sustainable Development (FONA)” framework program promoted.
By means of a hydrometallurgical process, economically marketable rare earth and further metal concentrates can be obtained from waste. To this end, potentially suitable material flows should be identified and analyzed, and based on the obtained data processing methods for obtaining NdFeB concentrates from relevant material streams should be developed. For this purpose, a subsequent hydrometallurgical recycling process based on results from the BMBF-funded project "Recycling of components and strategic metals from electric traction drives (MORE)" is to be further developed to a small production scale.
If the project succeeds in the desired manner, relevant quantities of the rare earth metals such as neodymium, praseodymium, dysprosium and terbium, which are particularly important for many future technologies such as electromobility, wind energy and phosphors, are obtained from secondary raw materials, the university announced.
Source: Göttinger Tagesblatt by Angela Brünjes
