Towards neodymium recycling

Abstract

The world is facing a growing neodymium demand, creating the need for developing a recycling system to handle future waste flows. Recycling technologies are emerging, but the recycling system around them can only be established with knowledge about available end-of-life (EoL) products. Therefore, this study quantified neodymium waste in European countries using material flow analysis, and assessed the recyclability of major EoL products. For 2019, we find a waste flow of 7.7 kt Nd, consisting mostly of NdFeB magnets. HDDs represent a large current waste flow, while the demand for magnets in industrial applications is increasing. In the future, electric vehicle motors and wind turbines likely provide a source of neodymium with good recyclability. Consequently, there will be different product groups that determine the future waste volumes. To manage the changing waste flows, a neodymium recycling system should be developed with the product properties of future waste flows in mind. Meanwhile, the recyclability of products can be improved by addressing bottlenecks in the recycling chain.