EU study looks at recycling rare earth metals

The Gothenburg, Sweden-based company Stena Metall has announced that it is participating in a Europe-wide study that seeks to develop processes to recycle rare earth metals from a host of electronic equipment.

The EU project, called REE4EU, will look at strategies parties can undertake to create sustainable recycling solutions for the electronic equipment.

In a Stena Metall release, Christer Forsgren, the head of Stena Metall Group’s environmental and technological operations, says, “We are looking at methods for improving the supply of these metals. Old smartphones and other small electronic devices are typically put away in dresser drawers, or even worse, thrown out with the trash and incinerated, and when that happens the metals are gone for good.”

The REE4EU project is focused on implementation, pilot plants and commercial solutions. Companies, academia and recycling companies are all involved in the project consortium. There are 14 different parties involved in the project. Besides Stena, the only other company that has a significant involvement in recycling is SNAM,  a France-based battery recycling firm.

The project has been funded through Horizon 2020 TOPIC SPIRE-07-2015. The goal of the project is to find breakthrough innovations in the field of recovery technologies for metals and other minerals. It will make available rare earth elements and rare earth alloys for magnet production by developing, for the first time at industrial scale, an efficient and cost effective method of extraction and a direct production route for rare earth alloys which will be achieved through in-process and end-of-life permanent magnets as well as Ni metal hydride battery waste.

The picture shows neodymium magnets from end of life hard disk drives, separated in a pilot process at Stena Nordic Recycling Center in Halmstad.