University of Birmingham and Bentley Partner in Rare Earth Recycling Project
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- Category: Tungsten's News
- Published on Wednesday, 10 March 2021 20:27
- Written by Caodan
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The University of Birmingham and Bentley Motors jointly and others on a three-year RaRE (Rare-earth Recycling for E-machines) rare earth recycling project to deliver a sustainable source of rare earth magnets for electric and hybrid vehicles. RaRE will build on an innovative technology developed by Professor Allan Walton and Professor Emeritus Rex Harris of the University’s Magnetic Materials Group, the only research group in the UK focused on processing and recycling of permanent rare earth magnetic materials.
Almost all-electric drive applications use rare earth magnets, but less than 1% of these are recycled. This technology is called Hydrogen Processing of Magnet Scrap (HPMS), which uses hydrogen decrepitation as a cost-effective and efficient way of extracting rare earths from redundant or broken products.
The University of Birmingham is working with Bentley Motors and others on a three-year research project to deliver a sustainable source of rare earth magnets for electric and hybrid vehicles. The US$3.6-million RaRE project is funded by the Office for Low Emission Vehicles (OLEV) and delivered in partnership with Innovate UK, and involves six partners who will work to establish the first end-to-end supply chain of rare earth recycling in the UK.
Hydrogen preferentially enters the rare earth metal, and causes an expansion in volume. The structure cannot cope with such a large volume expansion and decrepitates as grains break away from the material forming a fine powder. A safe mixture of hydrogen and inert gas at a low pressure causes magnets to decrepitate within a few hours. The de-magnetized alloy is then removed by screening and can be reprocessed directly back into new magnets as an alloy powder.
The University of Birmingham Enterprise has applied for a patent for this technology and subsequently licensed it to HyProMag Ltd., which was established by Birmingham researchers.
In this project, researchers will develop a process for extracting and recovering magnets from computer hard drives to manufacture rare earth magnets for use in custom auxiliary motors. At the same time, HyProMag will further develop the recycling technology developed by the University of Birmingham. The school will also provide casting alloys. HyProMag will mix these alloys with secondary materials and press-mold the metal powder to produce sintered magnets.
As one of the partners of the project, Unipart Powertrain Applications Ltd, will lead the development of manufacturing routes and continue to expand the scale to ensure that the relevant facilities and processes are suitable for mass car production.
Nick Mann, General Manager of HyProMag Operations, said: "RaRE is an exciting project and a fantastic opportunity. HyProMag's rare earth recycling technologies allow us to produce NdFeB magnets with a much lower embedded carbon cost than using virgin supply and with independence from Chinese supply and we are working closely with our major shareholder Mkango Resources to further grow the business. We are proud to be working with established, innovative and renowned companies in the RaRE project with whom we can showcase the technologies of the RaRE project as a whole - recycled magnets being used for cutting edge products in a prestige application."
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