Rare Earth Elements: A Review of Production, Processing ...

Rare Earth Elements Review Section 5 – Rare Earth Element Recovery/Alternative Material Use
Engineering discovered how to recover significant quantities of REOs present in titanium dioxide
mineral. While the original benefits of this technology were thought to be that it could improve
purity, eliminate hazardous wastes, and cut costs and CO2 emissions, the team also discovered
that they could extract significant quantities of REM oxides as co-products of the refining
process. Current recovery rates of oxides of neodymium, cerium, and lanthanum vary between 60
percent and 80 percent and are thought to be able to be increased in the future (University of
Leeds, 2009).
5.3 Commercial REE-Recycling Applications
Review of the literature indicates that the number of commercial REE-recycling operations is limited, but
that is likely to change in the near future due to the number of operations under development and the
amount of research that is ongoing. Table 5-1 provides a summary of commercial, or soon-to-becommercial,
operations by selected companies and includes the information that is known on the target
item to be recycled, the materials being recovered, the technology to be used, the anticipated time frame
until commercial application; notes with respect to cost or environmental benefits; and the source of
information. Consistent with the information reported here, the literature indicates that the focus of REErecycling
research and commercialization efforts has been on magnets, batteries, lighting and
luminescence, and catalysts (Schuler et al., 2011). It should be noted that in many cases, the companies
that are in the process of developing or deploying recycling technologies have not published reports or
papers with the details of their individual processes, as these are generally a competitive advantage and
considered proprietary.
Company
Table 5-1. Recycling Operations, Technologies Utilized, Current Status, and Benefits
Target
Feedstock/
Element
Hitachi Rare earth
magnets from
air conditioner
compressors
and hard disk
drives
Toyota Hybrid car
batteries
Technology
to Be Used
Automated
separation
process and
dry extraction
process
Anticipated Time to
Commercialization
Anticipates recycling
will meet 10% of its
need by 2013 when
facility goes online
Benefits (Cost and
Environmental) Source
Dry extraction
method that allows
processing without
acids; resulting waste
water problem.
Automated
separation process is
faster than manual.
Cost savings
anticipated.
Unknown Ongoing Main driver is supply
concerns
http://www.hitachi.
com/New/cnews/1
01206.pdf
http://shanghaiscr
ap.com/?p=5654
Japan’s Air conditioners Plans to 2011 No information http://www.matter
Shin-Etsu recycle readily available. network.com/2011
Chemical recovered
/3/new-push­
REEs into
recycle-rare
magnets
earth.cfm
Showa Dysprosium and No Estimated output of No information http://www.bloomb
Denko KK didymium (a information 800 tons from readily available. erg.com/news/201
mixture of readily recycling facility
0-12-08/hitachi­
praseodymium available.
recycles-rare
and
earth-as-china
neodymium)
crimpssupply.html
5-8