| Current Trends In Recycling, Usage and Market of Rare-Earths Marcos De Campos1; Jose Adilson De Castro1; 1UFF - FEDERAL FLUMINENSE UNIVERSITY, Volta Redonda, Brazil; PAPER: 198/SISAM/Regular (Oral) SCHEDULED: 12:35/Fri. 25 Oct. 2019/Dr. Christian Bernard ABSTRACT: Here is presented an overview on the usage and application of rare-earths, and also of the rare-earth market. This overview will focus on recent trends. The low price of rare-earths have discouraged some mining projects, such as that of Brazilian company CBMM which decided to keep focusing on niobium production. Serra Verde, a Brazilian mining company, however, promised to start production in the next decade of heavy rare-earths as dysprosium. The Mountain Pass Californian mine returned to produce rare-earths, and now has an annual production of similar size as the Australian mine Lynas. Both Lynas and Mountain Pass focus on light rare-earths. Mountain Pass sends the rare-earth concentrate for further processing in China. Myanmar also had significant production of rare-earths last year, with an amount near that of Lynas and Mountain Pass. The Neodymium oxide prices have decreased 10% since the beginning of 2019. Both Neodymium and Praseodymium are seen as essential for electric cars. Each electric car uses ~1 -1.5 kg of NdPr-Fe-B type magnets [1]. Giant wind turbines, constructed without gearbox, which avoids maintenance problems, need tons of NdPr-Fe-B magnets. The Europium price is low at the present time, and has been below the Holmium price. Both Gadolinium and Holmium have been used as alloying elements in rare-earth magnets. Terbium is in high demand, which is attributed to the application of Tb in Terbium-diffused magnets. Dysprosium also is seen as necessary to increase the temperature of operation of the magnets. Cerium and Lanthanum are in large oversupply. Application of Cerium as red pigment (Ce2S3) has been proposed. Use of cerium base red pigments would avoid use of cadmium or molybdenum-chromium. Recycling of fluorescent lightbulbs for recovering Europium and Terbium is possible, but the low price of Europium is a problem for economic feasibility. Now, LED lightbulbs, which use much less are-earths than fluorescent lightbulbs, are dominating the market. Recycling of Magnets is possible, since there is standardization of commercial magnets. An enormous amount of energy is spent in the magnet production. If only the rare-earth oxide, such as neodymium oxide, is recovered, the energy used in the process is lost. The re-use of magnets is the best option for rare-earth magnet recycling. References: [1] MF de Campos. Magnetic Materials for Motors of Electric Cars. In: Proceedings of the 25th International Workshop on Rare Earth Permanent Magnets and Advanced Magnetic Materials and Their Applications REPM 2018, Beijing, China, August 26-30, 2018. p. A0414-01-A0414-11. |
