Andy Home, recycling pioneers racing to close rare earths scrap gaps

How can we break our dependence on China in the West for rare earth magnets

This question is more urgent now than ever after China restricted its exports in the first half of this year. The move sent shockwaves throughout Western manufacturing chains.

The race to create domestic mine-to magnet supply chains is accelerating, especially in the United States. Here, the Department of Defense has taken a direct stake, MP Materials, the operator of the only rare earths mining facility in the country, and guaranteed a minimum price for the products.

Old laptops, powertools and smartphones are all part of the solution.

It's amazing that less than 1 percent of rare earths are recycled, given the importance of these materials in high-tech products today.

This could be about to change.

Technical Breakthroughs

The low rate of recycling is a result of a combination technological and economic challenges.

It can be laborious and energy-intensive to dismantle magnet motors in order to remove the rare earths. Rare earths are so insignificant that they do not make it worth the effort to remove them from final products.

The automotive shredders will remove copper and aluminum from end-of life vehicles, but rare earth magnets are lost in steel mills where they end up as slag that is destined to landfill.

A number of companies have, however, cracked the code using a variety of technologies.

Cyclic Materials, a Canadian company, announced in June that it would invest $25 million in an Ontario recycling facility to convert 500 tons of magnet-rich raw materials per year into mixed rare-earth oxide.

Cyclic, the UK’s largest automotive salvage company, has signed agreements for the supply end-of life motors to Lime, which is the company behind the ubiquitous share e-bike.

The proprietary dismantling technology and processing techniques recover not only the rare earths, but also all other metals like copper. This copper will then be sent to Glencore’s Horne Smelter in Quebec to refine back into cathode.

American Resources Corp.'s ReElement Technologies Division is pioneering the use chromatography at its Indiana plant to separate metals both from rare earth magnets as well as end-of life lithium-ion battery.

The company claims that its technology is 75% more energy efficient and produces 70% less carbon dioxide than current recycling processes.

Microsoft Data Centers, Western Digital, Microsoft, and Critical Materials Recycling have piloted a new acid-free dissolution technique developed by the Department of Energy’s Critical Materials Innovation Hub for recovering rare earths.

MP Materials is launching its own rare earths recycling company through a $500 million tie-up with Apple.

MAGNET POWER

The recycling revolution has only just begun to move from pilot operations to commercial scale.

The new technology is much cheaper than building new mines or primary processing plants. It can also produce units faster.

If the West is to be freed from China's chokehold on rare earths, it needs both primary and second-stream supply to catch up with the booming demand in the clean energy sector.

For ancillary systems such as audio and sensors, internal combustion vehicles only need a few small magnet motors. Permanent magnets, however, are essential components in most hybrid and electric vehicles. This means that the demand for rare earths will increase five-fold.

The shift towards renewable energy has also boosted the demand for rare earth magnets.

According to McKinsey, the global demand for permanent magnets will triple in the next decade.

The use of rare earth core magnet elements, such as neodymium (core), praseodymium (praseodymium), dysprosium (terbium) and terbium is expected to increase from 59,000 tonnes in 2022 to 170,000 tons in 2030.

TAPPING THE URBAN MINING

According to McKinsey, the current announced project pipeline will result in a shortfall of 60,000 tons or approximately 30% of magnet rare earths usage by 2035.

This assessment does not include China because it doesn't publish forecasts or regulate rare earths through quotas.

McKinsey warns that despite the West's efforts to loosen China’s grip on rare earths, the supply will only be gradually diversified. "Current pipelines and trajectory are likely to fail in the next five to 10 years."

This leaves China as the likely candidate to meet any global shortage, prolonging the West's problem with rare earths into the next decade.

Scrap could play a key role in the global balance for rare earths. McKinsey predicts that the scrap pool will continue to grow and shift from small magnets used in electronic devices, to larger magnets for electric vehicles and windmills.

By 2035, the rare earth value-stream could produce 40,000 tons pre-consumer and 41,000 tonnes post-consumer waste. The world's biggest processor, China, will have the majority of the pre-consumer scrap, while the post-consumer scrap will be distributed geographically.

The West could meet the growing demand for goods and services by tapping into this urban mine. It would also help to build up domestic supply chains.

McKinsey has stated that "understanding scrap pools and the technology needed to exploit them is the first step in powering the energy transformation's motor."

Now is the time to act.

These are the opinions of a columnist, who is also an author. Editing by Helen Popper

(source: Reuters)