A Semi-automatic System for Efficient Recovery of Rare Earth Permanent Magnets from Hard Disk Drives

Abstract

Rare earth permanent magnets (REPMs) are essential components in many electrical and electronic products, including clean energy applications. Currently over 90% of the world's rare earth elements (REEs) are produced in China, leading many other countries to classify REES as critical materials. Recycling is one of the approaches to address the supply risks. Unfortunately, to date, the recycling rate of REPMs has been very low and no industrial scale recovery of REPMs from end of life products exists. As a result, REEs end up either in the landfill or in the smelting slag while other more “common” metals are recycled. One explanation for why REPMs have not been retrieved from used products is that it can be time consuming and expensive if the labor cost is high. This paper reports the development of a semi-automatic system for profitably recovering REPMs from hard disk drives to maximize REEs resource efficiency.