Garaman: Rare earths avoid recycling because magnets permanently trap into steel slag
Ahmad Ghahreman · Building a supply chain for rare earth elements · Apr 25, 2024 · at 31:32
Ahmad Garaman, CEO of Cyclic Materials, explains why less than 1% of rare earth elements are currently recycled globally.
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“When we recycle end-of-life products magnets being magnetic attach to steel and travel with steel into steel recycling plants, iron recycling plants. And because of the chemistry in the steel recycling plants, rare earth elements report to a phase or chemistry and steel production plant that is called slag. It's a glass, just looks like glass on our windows really, and rare earth elements are locked inside the glass for good forever, and thermodynamically really stable, and you can spend a lot of money recycling those and recover those, but that would not make you money. Would be very environmentally pollutive as well. So that's the main reason why we don't recycle rare earth elements today, because we lose them into steel recycling plants.”
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