In its endeavour to reduce dependence on fossil fuels and mitigate climate change, our society is increasingly focusing on the development of new technologies and devices for energy conversion. Today, most devices used for power generation (generators) and electromobility (motors) utilise permanent magnets, and over 50% of these magnets are Nd-Fe-B based. In addition to Nd, these magnets also contain other elements such as Co and heavy rare earths, which are categorised as critical by the European Commission due to their economic importance, but also because of their supply risk. The recycling and reuse of these materials is crucial for securing supply chains and economic independence.
Before we recycle and reuse these materials, we try to identify the material flow, develop collection, dismantling and sorting procedures and assess the environmental impact of recycling processes, material substitution and life cycle analyses. Finding sustainable ways to recycle and reuse these materials is critical to reducing the environmental impact of these technologies.
Here we present the final phase of our study, in which we recycled pyrometallurgically end-of-life sintered Nd-Fe-B magnets to produce anisotropic hot-deformed Nd-Fe-B magnets, by spark plasma sintering, with very good performance (Br = 1.26 T, HcJ = 1440 kAm-1).