Lightning Machines aims to strengthen UK supply of critical metals
Lightning Machines has been awarded funding to investigate the application of high voltage electric pulses in the recovey of raw materials from electric vehicle (EV) motors.
The Fragmentation of Magnets project (FragMag) aims to liberate the high strength rare earth magnets contained within EV motors in order to recover these elements for reuse in other applications, including making more magnets!
Modern technologies such as EV’s contain motors or rotors that use magnets, and the strongest magnets are needed to make the best components, and the strongest magnets invariably use elements such as neodymium or dysprosium - known as ‘rare earth elements’.
Motor from a Chevrolet Spark (2013) - General Motors.
The British Geological Survey, and most other nations’ governments have classified neodymium and dysprosium as ‘critical materials’ meaning that these materials are both absolutely necessary for modern and future technologies, ut also the supply of these materials is at risk for any number of reasons, including both underproduction of the material, and also geopolitical issues.
Due to these risks, countries around the world have been scrambling to secure a stable supply of these critical materials, either through increasing domestic production, greater recycling, or neogtiating trade deals to secure future imports with friendly nations.
The large amount of critical materials that are trapped within products such as motors means they are a key item to try and recycle, however these products are designed to last and do not take well to being broken up! The current best practice involved shredding electronics, which creates dust, and can break the target material down into pieces too small to find and collect, meaning lots gets wasted. High voltage electrical discharges, however, have the potential to zap the magnets straight out!
Electric pulse fragmentation (EPF) is a novel technology that has come to market in the last couple of decades. It’s used extensively in a lab environment to separate specific minerals of interest from rocks, and also to break materials down for recycling. Commercially, EPF is used to break apart incinerator slags to recover metals without crushing them into too small pieces allowing greater recovery and recycling rates.
The FragMag project is in collaboration with the University of Warwick who will be assessing how well the products of the EPF process can be utilised.
FragMag is funded by the Innovate UK CLIMATES programme, which is designed to strengthen the UK's supply of critical materials - more information on CLIMATES and other projects can be found on the link below. Check back here for updates on the project as it progresses.