I-Corps: Rare Earth Recycling Technologies

这个I-Corps项目的更广泛的影响/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生产预计在未来十年内每年增长20-50%。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。稀土金属工业每年生产30，000 - 50，000吨钕、镝、镨和铽。 这个I-Corps项目的基础是开发一种从磁铁废料中提取稀土金属的技术，因为稀土金属供应短缺，因为目前美国没有大多数稀土金属的生产商。提出的回收稀土元素的方法使用液态金属溶剂浸出液溶解磁体中的稀土元素，然后使用新型重力驱动多效热系统蒸馏器（G-METS）将稀土元素从液态金属溶剂中分离。与传统的真空蒸馏相比，这种蒸馏技术旨在将整个流程的能耗降低70%，将总资本和运营成本降低50%。这一过程，镁浸出和G-METS蒸馏，使用的能源比目前的电解稀土生产少得多，没有全氟化碳排放。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

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.