I-Corps: Rare Earth Recycling Technologies

I-Corps：稀土回收技术

• 批准号: 2221200
• 负责人: Adam Powell
• 金额: $ 5万
• 依托单位: Worcester Polytechnic Institute
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2022-05-01 至 2023-09-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2221200&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Corps; Rare; Earth; Recycling; Technologies

The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project is the development of a process to gather rare earth magnet scrap, that could both increase supply security for U.S. production of rare earth magnets and also reduce the environmental impacts of their production. This is particularly important as production of electric vehicles and offshore wind turbines which use these magnets are projected to grow by 20-50% per year over the next decade. The production rare earth element currently has a very high carbon footprint due to the use of perfluorocarbon that are then emitted into the atmosphere contributing to global warming. The rare earth metal industry produces 30,000-50,000 tons/year of Neodynium, Dysprosium, Praseodymium and Terbium. This I-Corps project is based on the development of a technology to extract rare earth metals from magnet scrap because rare earth metals are in short supply as there are currently no U.S. producers of most rare earth metals. The proposed process of recycling rare earth elements uses a liquid metal solvent leachate to dissolve the rare earth elements in magnets, followed by a novel gravity-driven multi effects thermal system distiller (G-METS) to separate the rare earth elements from the liquid metal solvent. This distillation technology seeks to reduce the overall flow sheet energy consumption by 70% and the overall capital and operating costs by 50%, compared with traditional vacuum distillation. This process, with magnesium leaching and G-METS distillation, uses much less energy than current electrolytic rare earth production, with no perfluorocarbon emissions. This proposed process with G-METS magnesium distillation may enables the economical recycling of elements in magnets.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

I-Corps项目更广泛的影响/商业潜力是开发一种收集稀土磁铁废料的工艺，这既可以增加美国稀土磁铁生产的供应安全，也可以减少其生产对环境的影响。这一点尤其重要，因为使用这些磁铁的电动汽车和海上风力涡轮机的产量预计将在未来十年以每年20-50%的速度增长。由于使用全氟化碳，稀土元素的生产目前具有非常高的碳足迹，然后排放到大气中，导致全球变暖。稀土金属工业生产3 -5万吨/年的钕、镝、镨、铽。I-Corps项目的基础是开发从磁铁废料中提取稀土金属的技术，因为目前美国没有大部分稀土金属的生产商，稀土金属供不应求。提出的稀土元素回收工艺采用液态金属溶剂浸出液将稀土元素溶解在磁体中，然后采用新型重力驱动多效应热系统蒸馏器（G-METS）将稀土元素从液态金属溶剂中分离出来。与传统的真空蒸馏相比，该蒸馏技术旨在将整体流程能耗降低70%，总资金和运营成本降低50%。这一过程采用镁浸出和G-METS蒸馏，比目前的电解稀土生产消耗的能源少得多，而且没有全氟碳排放。提出的G-METS镁蒸馏工艺可以实现磁体中元素的经济回收。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。