Looking ahead, demand for these items is expected to increase exponentially in the coming years.

In this context, the European Union aims to secure the supply of these materials to generate autonomy in the rare earth element and magnet value chains across the continent. To this end, a consortium of representatives from European industry, research, and technology organizations, including the CEIT technology center, has launched the European project REEPRODUCE. Its objective is to establish, for the first time, an industrial-scale value chain for recycling permanent magnets based on sustainable rare earth elements (REEs).

Within the framework of the project, Ceit will use technologies such as robotics, vision, and artificial intelligence to develop a pilot project for the automated recycling of WEEE (Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment) such as hard drives and personal electric mobility products like scooters or robotic vacuum cleaners. This dismantling will focus on the automated extraction of components such as the write head arm or spindle rotor from hard drives containing neodymium (Nd) magnets. The center will also work on a second pilot project to extract, among other things, electric motors containing neodymium from this electronic waste.

In this way, as Diego Borro, principal investigator of the Vision and Robotics team at Ceit and head of the project, explains, “magnets can be extracted and processed from recycled electronic products so that they can be reused in new products using environmentally friendly technologies, at a reasonable cost.”.

First climate-neutral continent

The REEPRODUCE project is funded by the European Union's Horizon Europe research and innovation program and will run for the next four years. The project aims to optimize innovative technologies for recycling Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) at a competitive cost. With regard to rare earth elements, the project seeks to demonstrate the environmental, social, and economic sustainability of this European initiative for these materials.

With these objectives, the EU aims to become the first climate-neutral continent by 2050, as renewable energy sources (REEs) are essential materials for the continent's green economy and political agenda. “64% of the demand for these materials is driven by the production of powerful permanent magnets containing vital elements such as neodymium and praseodymium for high-energy-efficiency electric motors. These devices are of paramount importance for the development of electric vehicles, renewable energy technologies, robotics, as well as for aerospace and defense applications,” Borro concludes.