• Login
    • Join
  • FOLLOW:
  • Subscribe Free
    • eNewsletter
    Checkout
    • Magazine
    • News
    • Printed Electronics
    • Raw Materials
    • Equipment
    • Services
    • Suppliers Guide
    • Resources
    • More
  • Magazine
  • News
  • Printed Electronics
  • Raw Materials
  • Equipment
  • Services
  • Suppliers Guide
  • Resources
  • Current & Past Issues
    Features
    Editorials
    Digital Edition
    Subscribe Now
    Advertise Now
    eNewsletter Archive
    Our Team
    Editorial Guidelines
    Breaking News
    Experts Opinion
    Financial News
    Manufacturers News
    Mergers and Acquisitions
    Online Exclusives
    Personnel
    Product Releases
    Suppliers News
    Live From Shows
    Displays and Lighting
    Photovoltaics
    Printed Batteries
    Printed Circuit Boards/Membrane Switches/In Mold Electronics
    Flexible and Printed Electronics
    RFID and NFC
    Sensors and Wearables
    Smart Cards and Packaging
    Touch Screens
    Adhesives, Barriers and Encapsulants
    Chemicals, Metals and Powders
    Conductive Inks and Coatings
    Electronic Materials
    Film, Paper, Glass and Substrates
    Graphene, Perovskites and Carbon Nanotubes
    Nanomaterials
    Printed Electronic Components
    Research Reports
    Semiconductors and Quantum Dots
    Energy Curing Equipment
    Lab and Testing Equipment
    Manufacturing Equipment
    Printing Equipment
    3D Printing
    Contract Manufacturing Services
    Product Design and Testing
    Research and Consulting
    Research Institutions
    Research Reports
    Universities
    Equipment
    All Companies
    Materials
    Categories
    Converting
    Printed Electronics Systems
    Associations
    Research and Services
    Used Machinery
    Add New Company
    Industry Events
    Live from show events
    Podcasts
    Videos
    Blogs
    Slideshows
    Infographics
    Webinars
    Whitepapers
    Equipment and Services
    Glossary
    • Magazine
      • Current & Past Issues
      • Features
      • Editorial
      • Columns
      • Digital Edition
      • eNewsletter Archive
      • Editorial Guidelines
      • Subscribe Now
      • Advertise Now
    • Breaking News
    • Suppliers Guide
      • Suppliers Guide
      • Add Your Company
    • Printed Electronics
      • Photovoltaics
      • Printed Batteries
      • Printed Circuit Boards/Membrane Switches/In Mold Electronics
      • Flexible and Printed Electronics
      • RFID and NFC
      • Sensors and Wearables
      • Smart Cards and Packaging
      • Touch Screens
    • Raw Materials
      • Adhesives, Barriers and Encapsulants
      • Chemicals, Metals and Powders
      • Conductive Inks and Coatings
      • Electronic Materials
      • Film, Paper, Glass and Substrates
      • Graphene, Perovskites and Carbon Nanotubes
      • Nanomaterials
      • Semiconductors and Quantum Dots
    • Equipment
      • Energy Curing Equipment
      • Lab and Testing Equipment
      • Manufacturing Equipment
      • Printing Equipment
      • 3D Printing
    • Services
      • Contract Manufacturing Services
      • Product Design and Testing
      • Research and Consulting
      • Research Institutions
      • Research Reports
      • Universities
    • Online Exclusives
    • Slideshows
    • Blog
    • Videos
    • Podcasts
    • Infographics
    • Events
      • Industry Events
      • Live from show events
      • Webinars
    • About Us
      • About Us
      • Contact Us
      • Advertise With Us
      • Privacy Policy
      • Terms of Use
    Breaking News

    From Trash to Treasure: Electronic Waste Mined for Rare Earth Elements

    U.S. Department of Energy researchers invented a process to extract rare earth elements from the scrapped magnets of used hard drives and other sources.

    From Trash to Treasure: Electronic Waste Mined for Rare Earth Elements
    Credit: Carlos Jones/Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U.S. Dept. of Energy
    Related Content
    • Seven ORNL Researchers Receive DOE Early Career Funding Awards
    • Science Drives Next-gen Creations at DOE’s Manufacturing Demonstration Facility
    • ORNL Welcomes Seven New Research Fellows to Innovation Crossroads
    • ORNL, Lincoln Electric to Advance Large-Scale Metal Additive Manufacturing Technology
    • New Research Facility Will Serve ORNL’s Mission in Computing, Materials R&D
    08.15.19
    Rare earth elements are the “secret sauce” of numerous advanced materials for energy, transportation, defense and communications applications. Their largest use for clean energy is in permanent magnets, which retain magnetic properties even in the absence of an inducing field or current.

    Now, U.S. Department of Energy researchers invented a process to extract rare earth elements from the scrapped magnets of used hard drives and other sources. They have patented and scaled up the process in lab demonstrations and are working with ORNL’s licensee Momentum Technologies of Dallas to scale the process further to produce commercial batches of rare earth oxides.

    “We have developed an energy-efficient, cost-effective, environmentally friendly process to recover high-value critical materials,” said co-inventor Ramesh Bhave of DOE’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, who leads the membrane technologies team in ORNL’s Chemical Sciences Division. “It’s an improvement over traditional processes, which require facilities with a large footprint, high capital and operating costs and a large amount of waste generated.”

    Permanent magnets help computer hard drives read and write data, drive motors that move hybrid and electric cars, couple wind turbines with generators to make electricity, and assist smartphones to translate electrical signals into sound.

    Through the patented process, magnets are dissolved in nitric acid, and the solution is continuously fed through a module supporting polymer membranes. The membranes contain porous hollow fibers with an extractant that serves as a chemical “traffic cop” of sorts; it creates a selective barrier and lets only rare-earth elements pass through. The rare-earth-rich solution collected on the other side is further processed to yield rare earth oxides at purities exceeding 99.5%.

    That’s remarkable considering that typically, 70% of a permanent magnet is iron, which is not a r are earth element. “We are essentially able to eliminate iron completely and recover only rare earth,” Bhave said. Extracting desirable elements without co-extracting undesirable ones means less waste is created that will need downstream treatment and disposal.

    Supporters of the work include DOE’s Critical Materials Institute, or CMI, for separations research and DOE’s Office of Technology Transitions, or OTT, for process scale-up. ORNL is a founding team member of CMI, a DOE Energy Innovation Hub led by DOE’s Ames Laboratory and managed by the Advanced Manufacturing Office. Bhave’s “mining” of an acidic solution with selective membranes joins other promising CMI technologies for recovering rare earth, including a simple process that crushes and treats magnets and an acid-free alternative.

    Industry depends on critical materials, and the scientific community is developing processes to recycle them. However, no commercialized process recycles pure rare earth elements from electronic-waste magnets. That’s a huge missed opportunity considering 2.2 billion personal computers, tablets and mobile phones are expected to ship worldwide in 2019, according to Gartner. “All of these devices have rare earth magnets in them,” Bhave said.

    Bhave’s project, which began in 2013, is a team effort. John Klaehn and Eric Peterson of DOE’s Idaho National Laboratory collaborated in an early phase of the research focused on chemistry, and Ananth Iyer, a professor at Purdue University, later assessed the technical and economic feasibility of scale-up.

    At ORNL, former postdoctoral fellows Daejin Kim and Vishwanath Deshmane studied separations process development and scale-up, respectively.

    Bhave’s current ORNL team, comprising Dale Adcock, Pranathi Gangavarapu, Syed Islam, Larry Powell and Priyesh Wagh, focuses on scaling up the process and working with industry partners who will commercialize the technology. 

    To ensure rare earth could be recovered across a wide spectrum of feedstocks, researchers subjected magnets of varying composition—from sources including hard drives, magnetic resonance imaging machines, cell phones and hybrid cars—to the process.

    Most rare earth elements are lanthanides, elements with atomic numbers between 57 and 71 in the periodic table. “ORNL’s tremendous expertise in lanthanide chemistry gave us a huge jump start,” Bhave said. “We started looking at lanthanide chemistries and ways by which lanthanides are selectively extracted.”

    Over two years, the researchers tailored membrane chemistry to optimize the recovery of rare earth. Now, their process recovers more than 97% of the rare earth elements.

    To date, Bhave’s recycling project has resulted in a patent and two publications documenting the recovery of three rare earth elements—neodymium, praseodymium and dysprosium—as a mixture of oxides.

    The second phase of separations began in July 2018 with an effort to separate dysprosium from neodymium and praseodymium. A mixture of the three oxides sells for $50 a kilogram. If dysprosium could be separated from the mixture, its oxide could be sold for five times as much.

    The program’s second phase will also explore if ORNL’s underlying process for separating rare earth can be developed for separating other in-demand elements from lithium-ion batteries. “The expected high growth of electric vehicles is going to require a tremendous amount of lithium and cobalt,” Bhave said.

    Industrial efforts needed to deploy the ORNL process into the marketplace, funded over two years by DOE’s OTT Technology Commercialization Fund, began in February 2019.

    The goal is to recover hundreds of kilograms of rare earth oxides each month and validate, verify and certify that manufacturers could use the recycled materials to make magnets equivalent to those made with virgin materials.



    Pictured: From left, ORNL team members Dale Adcock, Ramesh Bhave, Priyesh Wagh, Pranathi Gangavarapu, Syed Islam and Larry Powell are helping ORNL’s patent licensee Momentum Technologies scale up this laboratory-scale process for commercial deployment. Credit: Carlos Jones/Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U.S. Dept. of Energy
    Related Searches
    • devices
    • batteries
    • electronic
    • LED
    Suggested For You
    Seven ORNL Researchers Receive DOE Early Career Funding Awards Seven ORNL Researchers Receive DOE Early Career Funding Awards
    Science Drives Next-gen Creations at DOE’s Manufacturing Demonstration Facility Science Drives Next-gen Creations at DOE’s Manufacturing Demonstration Facility
    ORNL Welcomes Seven New Research Fellows to Innovation Crossroads ORNL Welcomes Seven New Research Fellows to Innovation Crossroads
    ORNL, Lincoln Electric to Advance Large-Scale Metal Additive Manufacturing Technology ORNL, Lincoln Electric to Advance Large-Scale Metal Additive Manufacturing Technology
    New Research Facility Will Serve ORNL’s Mission in Computing, Materials R&D New Research Facility Will Serve ORNL’s Mission in Computing, Materials R&D
    ORNL’s Sheng Dai Elected Materials Research Society Fellow ORNL’s Sheng Dai Elected Materials Research Society Fellow
    Your Renewable Energy Technology is Growing Old – What Your Renewable Energy Technology is Growing Old – What's Next?
    3D Printing is Helping to Shape the Building Industry 3D Printing is Helping to Shape the Building Industry
    OE-A Presents the Future at LOPEC 2019 OE-A Presents the Future at LOPEC 2019
    OE-A Presents the Future at LOPEC 2019 OE-A Presents the Future at LOPEC 2019

    Related Breaking News

    • Breaking News | Personnel | Research Institutions | Sensors and Wearables
      Seven ORNL Researchers Receive DOE Early Career Funding Awards

      Seven ORNL Researchers Receive DOE Early Career Funding Awards

      The Early Career Research Program supports the development of individual research programs of outstanding scientists early in their careers.
      08.07.19

    • 3D Printing | Breaking News | Research Institutions
      Science Drives Next-gen Creations at DOE’s Manufacturing Demonstration Facility

      Science Drives Next-gen Creations at DOE’s Manufacturing Demonstration Facility

      Approximately 80 ORNL researchers focus primarily on additive manufacturing.
      06.13.19

    • Breaking News | Graphene, Perovskites and Carbon Nanotubes | Photovoltaics | Research Institutions | Sensors and Wearables

      ORNL Welcomes Seven New Research Fellows to Innovation Crossroads

      Will have the opportunity to advance their technologies by working with ORNL’s experts and capabilities.
      06.12.19


    • 3D Printing | Breaking News | Research Institutions

      ORNL, Lincoln Electric to Advance Large-Scale Metal Additive Manufacturing Technology

      Collaborating on large-scale, robotic additive manufacturing technology.
      05.10.19

    • Breaking News | Research Institutions
      New Research Facility Will Serve ORNL’s Mission in Computing, Materials R&D

      New Research Facility Will Serve ORNL’s Mission in Computing, Materials R&D

      The TRC has an estimated total project cost of $95 million.
      05.08.19

    Loading, Please Wait..
    Trending
    • Emerson Launches Ovation Green Software Portfolio
    • Monthly Recap: LG OLED, Avery Dennison And JOLED Top This Month’s Stories
    • Weekly Recap: CES 2023, Ams OSRAM And Celanese Top This Week’s Stories
    • LOPEC 2023: Here Are The Highlights For Printed Electronics
    • Zebra Technologies Extends Partnership With The NFL
    Breaking News
    • Identiv Expands NFC and HF Solutions Portfolio
    • HID Acquires GuardRFID to Expand Healthcare Offering
    • DuPont Reports Fourth Quarter, Full Year 2022 Results
    • Worldwide Silicon Wafer Shipments Set New Records in 2022: SEMI
    • NXP Semiconductors Reports 4Q, Full-Year 2022 Results
    View Breaking News >
    CURRENT ISSUE

    Winter 2021

    • Printed Electronics Now’s International Suppliers’ Directory
    • The Automotive Market and Flexible and Printed Electronics
    • Flexible and Printed Electronics in Healthcare
    • Flexible and Printed Electronics Make Gains in Smart Packaging
    • PAPERONICS: Low-cost multisensory paper and packaging applications
    • View More >

    Cookies help us to provide you with an excellent service. By using our website, you declare yourself in agreement with our use of cookies.
    You can obtain detailed information about the use of cookies on our website by clicking on "More information”.

    • About Us
    • Privacy Policy
    • Terms And Conditions
    • Contact Us

    follow us

    Subscribe
    Nutraceuticals World

    Latest Breaking News From Nutraceuticals World

    Tocotrienols May Have Protective Effect on Liver in NAFLD Patients
    Indian Gooseberry Extract Shown to Offer Blood Sugar Management Benefits
    ADM Expands Production to Meet Demand for Probiotics
    Coatings World

    Latest Breaking News From Coatings World

    AkzoNobel Reports Revenue Growth in 2022
    Orion Engineered Carbons Announces New Distribution Partnerships
    Personnel Changes at BASF
    Medical Product Outsourcing

    Latest Breaking News From Medical Product Outsourcing

    MD&M West News: Teamvantage Launches New Parent Company
    BD Receives EUA from FDA for COVID-19, Influenza A/B, RSV Combination Test
    Qosina Names Lee Pochter as Executive Vice President
    Contract Pharma

    Latest Breaking News From Contract Pharma

    KORSCH Acquires MEDELPHARM to Strengthen R&D Product Line
    SRI Names Kathlynn Brown Biosciences Division President
    Battelle, AmplifyBio, Andelyn Biosciences Win Research Contract
    Beauty Packaging

    Latest Breaking News From Beauty Packaging

    Macro-Environmental Factors Impacting the Packaging Industry
    Coty Sales Decrease 3% as Reported in Q2 2023
    Tree Hut Introduces Body Wash Line
    Happi

    Latest Breaking News From Happi

    A.S. Watsons Group Opens 17 Stores in in the Middle East in Two Years
    Dior Named in Potential Class Action Lawsuit for SPF Claims in Long-Wear Foundation
    Edgewell Personal Care Reports Sales Increase of 1.3% From Prior-Year Period
    Ink World

    Latest Breaking News From Ink World

    Orion Carbons Announces New Distribution Partnerships
    DuPont Reports 4Q, Full Year 2022 Results
    Graphic Packaging Reports Strong 4Q, Full Year 2022 Results
    Label & Narrow Web

    Latest Breaking News From Label & Narrow Web

    Norway's Digital Etikett grows with HP Indigo
    Heidelberg reports strong first three quarters
    The Oldham Group names Doug McClure technical sales rep
    Nonwovens Industry

    Latest Breaking News From Nonwovens Industry

    Edgewell’s Sales Increase
    Mitsui Chemicals, Asahi Kasei Combine Nonwovens Businesses
    Hospeco Offers TaskBrand Prep-Paint-Finish Wiping System
    Orthopedic Design & Technology

    Latest Breaking News From Orthopedic Design & Technology

    OssDsign Launches New Product for Additional Surgical Procedures
    OSSIO Introduces Non-Permanent Compression Staple
    Dennis Jones Joins Intelivation Technologies as Manufacturing VP
    Printed Electronics Now

    Latest Breaking News From Printed Electronics Now

    Identiv Expands NFC and HF Solutions Portfolio
    HID Acquires GuardRFID to Expand Healthcare Offering
    DuPont Reports Fourth Quarter, Full Year 2022 Results

    Copyright © 2023 Rodman Media. All rights reserved. Use of this constitutes acceptance of our privacy policy The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Rodman Media.

    AD BLOCKER DETECTED

    Our website is made possible by displaying online advertisements to our visitors.
    Please consider supporting us by disabling your ad blocker.


    FREE SUBSCRIPTION Already a subscriber? Login