Recyclers racing to close the rare earths scrap gap

How can the West break its dependency on China for rare earth magnets?

- Andy Home

The question has taken on new urgency after China restricted exports earlier this year, sending shockwaves through Western manufacturing chains.

The race to build domestic mine-to-magnet supply chains has accelerated, particularly in the United States, where the Department of Defense is taking a direct stake in MP Materials, operator of the country’s only rare earths mine, and guaranteeing a floor price for its products.

But part of the solution is lying in plain sight all around us in the form of old laptops, power tools and smartphones.

Given the criticality of rare earths in today’s high-tech world, it’s astonishing that less than 1% are recycled.

That may be about to change.

TECHNICAL BREAKTHROUGHS

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

Dismantling magnet motors, removing the rare earths and reprocessing them can be both manually and energy intensive.

The concentration of rare earth elements in the final product is often so low that it is simply not worth it.

Automotive shredders, for example, will strip copper and aluminium out of end-oflife vehicles but the rare earth magnets end up in a steel mill, where they are lost to slag destined for landfill.

Several companies, however, seem to have cracked the problem using an array of technologies which they are now bringing to bear on the problem.

Canada’s Cyclic Materials announced in June a $25-million investment (7.9 billion baht) in a recycling facility in Ontario to convert 500 metric tonnes per year of magnet-rich feed-stock into mixed rare earth oxide.