RaRE project aims for electric motors from waste

News

Birmingham University and Bentley Motors have embarked on a project to deliver a sustainable source of rare earth magnets for the marque’s electric and hybrid vehicles.

The £2.6m RaRE (Rare-earth Recycling for E-machines) project - funded by the Office for Low Emission Vehicles (OLEV) and delivered in partnership with Innovate UK - involves six partners who will establish the first end-to-end supply chain of recycled rare earth magnets in the UK.

C2I 2019: UK developed magnet-free electric motor ready for the road

Rare earth magnets are increasingly important in the transition to a low carbon economy but less than one per cent of these magnets is recycled.

The three-year RaRE project will build on technology developed by Professor Allan Walton and Professor Emeritus Rex Harris of the University’s Magnetic Materials Group , which is Britain’s only research group focussed on processing and recycling permanent rare earth magnetic materials.

The technology - Hydrogen Processing of Magnet Scrap (HPMS) - extracts rare earth metals from waste electronics by breaking them into a powder that is separated from remaining components.

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