Recycling Dreams Meet Industrial Reality

[DOC]

HyProMag scales recycled rare earth magnets production in UK, but strategic impact remains modest against China's dominance in global supply. (read full article...)

 

[soda47]

HyProMag scales recycled rare earth magnets production in UK, but strategic impact remains modest against China's dominance in global supply. (read full article...)

Thanks for writing the article which is vert interesting.

However, I do think that this article comes across as too bearish towards the technology and downplays its significance. People don't seem to take recycling seriously! I don't get it as it's a quick win using material that is already available. The path from mined ore through to magnet production is a complex and expensive process with several steps. There is precious little of it going on in the West. Permitting of mines takes years and even decades. This technology is simple genius. Recycled magnets broken down into a powder and pretty much straight to magnet making. It's a very fast and cheap process and very little CO2 footprint. No mining, processing, separation, metallisation or alloy making needed.

This technology is working at a commercial sized plant and Siemens are salivating in public over the performance of the recycled magnets produced. That's quite an endorsement! In terms of feedstock, the EU has explicit plans to ban the exporting of electronic waste. Surely different countries will start doing the same? And Hypromag uses technology that removes magnets from HDD in 3 seconds. Clearly it is early in the commercial deployment but I can see it going global. Adoption in other countries is being considered such as Japan (big magnet consumer in manufacturing), Canada and Mexico.

It feels like people don't really get how good this technology is or discount it as it is just "recycling".

Again thanks for the article and let's celebrate the commercial pathway of this type of success! Lots of other rare earth technologies that are currently at pilot and demonstration scale aren't going to make it to a commercial plant unfortunately. That's just the reality of scaling technology that works on a small scale.

 

[Aruncph]

1) I dont get why there is even a expectation that Recycling should disrupt the natural order

2) Recycling CAN coexist & make commercial sense. So, in that sense vibe of article is wrong

3) Mixing recycling with high grade us need of hour not a disadvantage.

You dont want Siemens Robot vacuum cleaner & high performance wind turbine to use expensive virgin alloys.

Siemens can actually make bottom line profit by mixing grades with recycling without compromising quality.

INFACT, its in best interest if these industrial powerhouse to keep this integrated in house as part of their factory line

Hypromag is the best viable recycler in market. I find it funny that Siemens is more excited & passionate to work on this at commercial scale than someone dedicated to cover this space .