About SUSMAGPRO – Solutions
How does SUSMAGPRO recover, reprocess and reuse rare earth elements to address current challenges?
SUSMAGPRO develops technological solutions at several levels to create a circular supply chain of rare earth magnets in Europe:
Recycling and Recovery
New sensing and robotic sorting lines to identify, sort and extract more efficiently materials containing the rare earth elements neodymium-iron-boron (NdFeB) from various waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE), such as hard disk drives (HDDs) of computers. The resulting magnetic scrap is ready for processing into powders.
Pilot scale production of reusable powders with the patented Hydrogen Processing of Magnetic Scrap (HPMS). This new technology enables to break down magnets and further materials containing NdFeB into powder. Once separated from other elements and purified, the resulting NdFeB powders are ready for reprocessing into magnetic components.
The four plants are located at SUSMAGPRO partners STENA Recycling (SRI – Sweden), University of Birmingham (UoB – United Kingdom), Magneti Ljubljana (MGI – Slovenia) and MIMplus Technologies (MPT – Germany). Learn more about the plants in the section Where to find us!
Both solutions build upon technologies developed in the EU FP7 project REMANENCE.
Reprocessing
Pilot reprocessing routes in Germany, Slovenia and the United Kingdom for the remanufacturing of magnets and recasting of alloys (materials used to produce magnets) improving four advanced techniques with higher yield and reduced waste production:
- Route A - sintering with and without blending;
- Route B - hydrogen decrepitation deabsorbation recombination (HDDR);
- Route C - shaping-debinding-sintering (SDS), a metal injection moulding technique developed in the EU H2020 project REProMag; and
- Route D - re-casting with new pyrometallurgical processes and purification.
The four routes are located at SUSMAGPRO partners Magneti Ljubljana (MGI – Slovenia), KOLEKTOR MAGNET TECHNOLOGY (KMT – Germany), MIMplus Technologies (MPT – Germany) and Less Common Metals (LCM – United Kingdom). Learn more about the routes in the section Where to find us!
Resulting magnetic products
The four techniques mentioned above were chosen as efficient, tailormade solutions providing most magnetic products needed by the European industry:
- Fully dense anisotropic sintered magnets – coming from Route A
- HDDR powder for bonding and hot pressing – coming from Route B
- Anisotropic, polymer bonded magnets – coming from Route B
- Fully dense anisotropic SDS (net-shaped) magnets with complex shape – coming from Route C
- Ingots for magnetic alloy production – coming from Route D
The end-user-ready permanent magnets are benchmarked against primary materials and demonstrated in a variety of products, such as motors of electric cars with SUSMAGPRO partner ZF Friedrichshafen (Germany), water pumps with SUSMAGPRO partner Grundfos (Denmark), loudspeakers with SUSMAGPRO partner B&C Speakers (Italy) and headphones with SUSMAGPRO partner Sennheiser Electronic (Germany). SUSMAGPRO magnets are also tested to Siemens Gamesa specifications for wind turbines.
With these technologies, SUSMAGPRO wants to achieve a number of ambitious objectives. Find out more about them!
SUSMAGPRO builds upon the following projects
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