Recycling Rare Earth Elements

The rare earth elements are a group of seventeen metals with physical and chemical characteristics that have made them highly sought after industrial materials. Two rare earth metals, neodymium and samarium, have powerful magnetic properties; to make the strongest magnets rare earth elements are alloyed with other metals.

Neodymium is combined with cobalt and iron to produce neodymium magnets, and samarium magnets contain an alloy of samarium and cobalt. Because of their characteristic combination of lightweight coupled with strong magnetic energy, rare earth magnets are used for applications where low cost, low bulk and high magnetic strength are important considerations.  A neodymium magnet can produce a magnetic field of 1.2 teslas and is capable of lifting a thousand times its own weight; a samarium magnet produces a less strong magnetic field but has the advantage of a higher Curie point and is useful in equipment and machinery that operate at high temperatures.


Rare earth magnets are used in a wide variety of applications.  They are increasingly used as components of miniaturized devices such as the micro-mechanisms used in biomedical fields.  Mass-produced consumer electronic products such as toys, video players, headphones and computer disk drives contain rare earth magnets, as do the magnetic resonance imaging scanners used in medical diagnostics.  Permanent magnet motors using rare earth magnets power electric and hybrid vehicles. There is a need in the energy industry for powerful coils and motors, and permanent magnet motors are employed in wind turbines and other heavy machinery for generating electrical power.

The rare earth metals, which tend to occur together in deposits, are found all over the world and, although uncommon, are as abundant as many familiar metals such as copper and zinc. Deposits of rare earth metals are usually in low concentrations that are uneconomical to exploit; in addition, recovering and isolating rare earth elements are challenging activities involving complex chemical and metallurgical processes. As suppliers of low-cost permanent magnets rare earth industries in China have come to dominate global markets in recent years.

Over 95 percent of the world’s supplies of rare earth metals are mined and refined in Southern China, Inner Mongolia and Tibet. Extracting and refining rare earth elements in those regions created heavy pollution; since 2010 China has changed its policy on rare earth industries, and has introduced export restrictions and tariff increases. These changes resulted in panic buying of rare earth products and a rapid escalation in prices of rare earth magnets in the global markets.


In moves to secure supplies that are sourced away from China, exploration for rare earth deposits has been renewed, and mines and refineries in India that were closed while prices were low are being reopened. Researchers in Japan are now actively involved in developing technologies to recycle rare earth metals from scrapped electronic products. As a source of materials for producing strong permanent magnets rare earth metal recycling is a practical and sustainable solution.