Experimental evidence for the suitability of the hydrogen decomposition process for the recycling of Nd-Fe-B sintered magnets

Abstract

An effective and complete processing route for the recycling of sintered Nd-Fe-B scrap magnets was proposed. Sintered Nd-Fe-B magnets were subjected to the Hydrogen Decrepitation (HD) process at various temperatures in the range of 50–300 °C, at two different pressures, 50 kPa and 200 kPa, followed by vacuum dehydrogenation in the range of 720–820 °C. The structure refinement efficiency and magnetic properties of the powders obtained were characterized. Low hydrogen pressure (50 kPa) was found to increase the magnetic properties at each temperature for all powder fractions. It was also shown that particle refinement occurs at low (50 °C, 100 °C) temperatures for low (50 kPa) pressure and higher temperatures (200 °C, 300 °C) for high pressure (200 kPa), respectively. High pressure also accelerates the initialization of the HD process at each temperature. No correlation was found between hydrogenation temperature and magnetic properties of the powders, except for the small increase in coercivity increase with growing temperature. The coarse fraction (400–500 µm) was found to have the highest magnetic properties for almost each HD process. The best magnetic properties Hci = 497 kA/m, Br = 1.1 T, and (BH)max = 121 kJ/m3 were obtained for hydrogenation at a temperature of 50 °C, pressure 50 kPa and dehydrogenation at 780 °C.