Tokyo Univ. Lab. Develops New Rare Earth Recycle Technology

Professor Toru Okabe’s team of University of Tokyo’s Institute of Industrial Science announced on Tuesday it developed technology to recover rare earth from rare earth magnet scrap efficiently. The dry method can recover neodymium and dysprosium from neodymium-iron-boron magnet without waste liquid containing heavy metals while prevailing method is wet type.

The new method uses magnesium chloride and zinc iodide to remove and recover rare earth from the magnet. The process is to recover leached rare earth by separating from iron and boron in the agents. Rare earth is separated from leached mixed salt with rare earth through vacuum distillation and other processes. The process can recover rare earth from scrap containing steel, aluminium, copper and nickel.

However, the team still tries to develop technology to recover neodymium and dysprosium from recovered rare earth compound. The team also tries to clear the cost hurdle when the dry process cost is higher than wet type. The team considers some of the solution including national stockpile system or appliances recycling system to clear the cost hurdle covers the process.

Many of rare earth cannot be recovered from magnet due to cost hurdle. Traditional wet type method is to recover rare earth from dirty magnet. However, waste liquid with heavy metals from the wet type method is to be treated.