© Geomega Resources

Kiril Mugerman, president and CEO of Quebec-based Geomega Resources, says the company has developed “disruptive technology” to separate and recycle rare earth elements (REEs) used in permanent magnets.   

Rather than use hydrochloric or sulfuric acid in its process, Geomega uses a different reagent that Mugerman says has been adapted from another industry and is more environmentally friendly. The company can capture and recycle at least 95 percent of this reagent in its batch process while also recovering niobium, iron and four rare earth elements: neodymium, praseodymium, terbium, dysprosium. Its process recently received a patent from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

Infeed materials are reduced to a particle size of 1 to 2 millimeters via shredding before being placed into the digestion chamber for processing, Mugerman says.

Geomega’s process allows the company to “maximize the reagent so that there is minimal to no waste,” he says. What waste there is is treated locally without the need to store trailings.

Geomega’s process produces REE oxides with 99.5 percent purity, Mugerman says.

The company is in the process of constructing a demonstration facility in Saint-Bruno-de-Montarville, Quebec, in the Greater Montreal area. Construction of the industrial complex was completed at the end of 2019 with final detail work underway. While the pandemic has delayed progress on the plant, Mugerman says he hopes it will be operational by year-end. Once operational, the plant will be able to process 1.5 metric tons in an eight-hour shift, he says.

Geomega says Saint-Bruno-de-Montarville provides a strategic location as it is only 30 minutes from Montreal and within six hours of major North American cities, such as Boston, New York and Toronto, with access to several major highways and expressways. It also benefits from access to major seaways with the Port of Montreal being 20 minutes away. The port is the largest container transhipment center in the Great Lakes system. The region also is served by Canadian National and Canadian Pacific railways.

© Geomega Resources

Geomega has secured project debt financing in the amount of $1.72 million from the Quebec government to help construct the recycling demonstration plant. Project financing is being provided by Investissement Quebec, which is acting as the agent of the Quebec government through the ESSOR program of the Ministry of Economy and Innovation of Quebec. The funds are being used to purchase equipment, engineering and construction of the demonstration plant.

When the financing was announced in February of this year, Mugerman said, “This significant construction financing of our rare earths magnets recycling facility is a critical first step in demonstrating that our ISR technology is scalable to a larger and potentially commercial scale. The cash flow generated from the commissioning of the plant and the validation of our technology will allow us to move towards processing other rare earth feed supplies, including mining concentrates from Montviel and other mining projects.”

The company is targeting end-of-life rare earth magnets, such as those in computer hard drives and other electronic devices, as feedstock for its demonstration plant. Mugerman says magnets are among the most common applications for rare earth elements, yielding comparatively high volumes of high-value REEs.

Geomega has secured agreements with suppliers of magnet scrap, he says. One such company is Jobmaster Magnet Canada Inc., Oakville, Ontario. The two companies have worked to establish a collection and recycling program with end users and traditional recyclers to return scrap magnets to either Geomega or Jobmaster Magnets to ultimately be recycled using Geomega’s process.

Geomega will be open to licensing its technology, Mugerman says, once the demo plant is up and running, but also is considering owning and operating its own processing facilities.

AMCS, Limerick, Ireland, has made an update to its AMCS Platform software for the waste and recycling industry. 

According to a news release from AMCS Group, this marks the second upgrade to the platform so far this year. In February, the AMCS Platform 8.2’s launch focused on companies gaining efficiencies. The company’s latest AMCS Platform 8.3 release is designed to make companies work quicker with more automation and enhanced integration capabilities.

The AMCS Platform 8.3 includes a few updated features, including:

• a new reporting and analytics work center;
• a process optimized and redesigned contract management and pricing engine; and
• a transformed materials management work center with redesigned and optimized inventory management, production shifts and material sales capabilities.

In addition, the new REST API feature in the AMCS Platform provides businesses with secure and reliable integration services of processes and data between on-premise, cloud applications and third-party applications with the AMCS Platform. 

“AMCS Platform guarantees waste, recycling and resource companies a strong foothold to proactively anticipate future development,” says Elaine Treacy, global product director at AMCS. “With the integrated solutions, AMCS Platform is contributing to the key value drivers of our customers and the industry, which are around increasing revenue growth, margin expansion, operational efficiency and sustainability, while at the same time reducing costs.

“For instance, brand new in the AMCS Platform 8.3 are the self-service reporting capabilities, the AMCS Datamart and AMCS Platform Connectivity, providing greater insight into businesses as well as delivering connectivity and integrations based on industry standards,” she says. “The new release demonstrates that the platform is built for change and innovation to increase the competitive edge of waste and recycling companies.”

AMCS says the industry-specific AMCS Platform offers a fully integrated and software-as-a-service-based end-to-end solutions to manage the waste and recycling life cycle of all lines of operations, including municipalities, commercial and industry waste, construction & demolition and recycling commodities.

Thyssenkrupp Materials Services, a subsidiary of Germany-based Thyssenkrupp, has announced that it partnered with Germany-based Mantro to start a steel recycling joint venture.

The new joint venture, MT Industry Recycling GmbH, formed June 2. The company aims to achieve a more effective return of steel scrap to production processes of the manufacturing industry.

“Few raw materials in the world can be recycled as effectively as steel,” says Jan Crommelinck, managing director of MT Industry Recycling GmbH and lead new business model at Thyssenkrupp Materials Services. “Already today, almost half of the steel production comes from recycled steel scrap. In Germany alone, this corresponds to over 20 million tons of scrap every year. We are convinced that coordinating and processing them offers enormous innovation potential.”

Thyssenkrupp Materials Services says the new joint venture is based in the Ruhr area of Germany on the site of the former Zollverein coal mine in Essen, Germany. The joint venture currently consists of five team members, including Crommelinck as well as managing director Dirk Müller who is from mantro.

In the future, customers such as steel mills and foundries will be able to purchase pure steel scrap directly from mt industry recycling GmbH, Thyssenkrupp Materials Services reports in a news release on the joint venture. 

“The intermediate step via the scrap dealer is no longer necessary,” the company states. “Thanks to the streamlined process, customers will benefit from significantly lower costs and thus lower purchase prices. The purity of the material also enables them to melt down and reprocess the scrap without any loss of quality. In addition, efficient logistics processes promise to make a positive contribution to more sustainability in recycling processes.” 

A company spokesperson says it’s too early to say anything about the volume of scrap mt industry recycling will recycle. He adds that the joint venture is not aiming to process scrap but rather handle waste products of metal processing companies. 

“Material recycling is the last missing component after steel production, processing and trading, which we can now offer our customers with the joint venture,” Crommelinck says. “We consistently see ourselves as part of the complete recycling management system.”

With the new joint venture, Thyssenkrupp Materials Services states that it is expanding its service portfolio in line with its “materials as a service” strategy in order to intensify customer relationships and drive forward integration into customers’ supply chains. 

“Mantro is an experienced company builder,” a company spokesperson says. “As [Thyssenkrupp Materials Services], we bring the expertise and contacts in the industry with us, and mantro has the competence to quickly turn ideas into a working prototype. The first talks between Thyssenkrupp Materials Services and mantro began in September 2019, and three ideas were presented in February: The race was won by the steel recycling joint venture, which was launched at the beginning of June.”

The companies say the spinoff of the new business as a separate, independent GmbH should enable the development and growth of customer solutions quickly.

As businesses around the country start to reopen after months of closures because of COVID-19, bottle and can redemption in California may not return to normal for quite some time. 

California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed an executive order on June 22 that allows grocers and retailers to choose if they would like to redeem bottle and cans, or continue not to for 60 more days. That order had already been in place since early March.

Since that order was put in place, redemption centers have remained open for collection, but those inside grocery stores and retailers have been able to stop collection. The order was put in place so those stores could focus on getting essential items for customers during the pandemic, not can and bottle collection.

In addition to California, nine other states have a bottle and can redemption bill. Many of those have restarted or are phasing those programs back in.  

Here’s where the other states stand:

•      Connecticut starting phasing back collection May 20;
•      Hawaii has not shared a statewide update on its suspension;
•      Iowa extended its suspension May 26;
•      Maine has not shared a statewide update on its suspension;
•      Massachusetts started to open redemptions June 5;
•      Michigan began phasing in its redemptions June 15;
•      New York resumed its collections June 3;
•     Oregon started redemptions again in early June; and
•     Vermont allowed retailers and redemption centers to decide for themselves at the end of April.

In Michigan, experts say 70 million cans and bottles went unredeemed each week of that state’s partial closure, which just reopened fully about a week ago.

Scott Breen, the vice president of sustainability with the Can Manufacturers Institute, Washington, says about 40 to 45 percent of recycled cans and bottles come from redemption states, so reopening, even in phases, is important.

In California, bottle and can redemption rates were already declining before this. Heidi Sanborn, with The National Stewardship Action Council (NSAC), Sacramento, California, and Susan Collins, with the Container Recycling Institute, which is based in Culver City, California, both say reverse vending machines in California could help with redemptions for people have limited contact with others, or don't live near a redemption center.

**This story has been edited to clarify that grocers and retailers can choose whether or not to redeem bottles and cans for the next 60 days, there was never a firm suspension on collection.