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Risheng Magnets International Co., Ltd.
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News
A team of researchers from the University of Leuven revealed that trihexyl(tetradecyl)phosphonium chloride could be utilized as an environmentally friendly, sustainable hydrometallurgical method for separating transition metals such as copper, cobalt, iron, manganese and zinc from rare earths in neodymium–iron–boron or samarium–cobalt permanent magnets.
The development facilitates the sourcing and recycling of rare earth materials in old magnets, which is especially helpful since some of such elements are invaluable to the electronics industry and is constantly at risk of becoming scant.
Permanent rare-earth magnets are found in electronic devices ranging from hard drives to air conditioners and wind turbines and the usefulness of neodymium and samarium in the microelectronics industry is outweighed only by their lack of availability, reported Chemistry World in the Royal Society of Chemistry's news site.
The European Commission has placed these elements on a list of critical raw materials.
In fact, according to lead researcher Koen Binnemans, recycling could well complement mining to reduce the supply-risk problem, with China being the major provider of rare earth metals and increasingly self-serving for its growing internal market.
"Although less than 1 per cent of rare-earth elements are recycled currently, 20 per cent of global demand could be met in this way," estimated Binnemans who sees the new recycling process as a means for the western world to regain some independence of China.
The next on the research roadmap is to work on real-world samples from end-of-life industrial magnetics.
Some industrial companies like Mitsubishi Electric and Hitachi have come up with disassembly robots for their own air-conditioning appliances and for hard disks, speeding up the recovery of rare-earth magnets for their re-use as raw crushed material by partner magnet manufacturers.
This is a small green step in the right direction, certainly encouraged by Japan's insularity and little resources.
In Europe the eco tax has been put in place as a form of collective contribution towards paying the costs of e-waste collection and recycling, but adding a small repairability/recyclability label would also give a chance for consumers to raise their vote with regard to the recycling issue. This may drive more businesses to offer appropriate repair services (at competitive prices rather than at extortion rates).
