“Faced with the scarcity of this raw material, TECNALIA has developed innovative technology to obtain raw materials and alloys with rare earth elements”
TECNALIA is working on the recovery of rare earth elements using innovative technology
The growing interest around the world in rare earth elements highlights their importance in the global economy. This group of chemical elements is considered essential for the decarbonisation and electrification of society, which is why the European Union has created its own policy on the matter. It should be noted that the EU plays a significant role in the manufacture of traction motors for cars and wind turbines, but does not produce permanent rare earth magnets. 98% of these magnets are imported from China. This means that the EU vulnerable, so several projects have been launched to develop an independent and resilient industry to establish the entire permanent magnet manufacturing chain.
TECNALIA and rare earth elements
TECNALIA has taken action and, given the scarcity of this raw material, it is developing innovative technology in the recovery of rare earth elements to obtain raw materials and alloys from our abundant “urban mines”. Although there are no primary rare earth mines in the EU, we have tonnes of these valuable elements discarded in mobile phones, electric scooter and wind turbine motors, hard disks, etc.
Therefore, with the aim of recovering this waste and reducing its percentage in magnets, as part of the MATBIL project, high-performance computational techniques based on TECNALIA’s ICME methodology have been used to discover and manufacture new magnetic materials using advanced sintering techniques. This project has also developed new plasma melting technology in a cold copper crucible that has enabled the recovery of various rare earth streams.
