Project description
Turning rare Earth waste into high-tech gold
Rare earth elements are vital for modern-day technologies, such as smartphones and electric cars, as well as wind turbines and medical imaging devices. However, mining and processing these critical materials, particularly the magnetic elements praseodymium, neodymium, dysprosium, and terbium, are challenging. It is costly and comes with a heavy environmental toll. The EIC-funded REMMIA project aims to make this easier and more sustainable. Specifically, it will recycle the most valuable and least recovered components of permanent magnets. It will combine magneto-electrodeposition with antisolvent extraction to recover over 90 % of rare earths with 99 % purity. This could supply a quarter of the EU’s annual demand from recycled sources, and reduce reliance on mining.
Objective
Rare earth elements (REE) are crucial for modern technology, used in batteries, smartphones, electric cars, wind generators, industrial robots, military drones, and medical imaging. Demand for REE in permanent magnets is expected to increase tenfold by 2050. The four magnetic elements Pr, Nd, Dy, Tb account for over 90% of the total value of extracted rare earths. The current processing from mining to magnet manufacture involves costly and environmentally challenging steps. Our project, REMMIA, focuses on finding new recycling solutions for the most critical and least recycled materials in the EU, offering a sustainable alternative to harmful mining processes. We aim to develop a novel fundamental approach to improve the efficiency and flexibility of chemical separations needed to recycle REE permanent magnets. By combining 3d-4f and 4f-4f metal separation based on magneto-electrodeposition and antisolvent extraction, we propose a synergistic blending of two innovative approaches to achieve a technological breakthrough on fine local control of oxide nucleation and precipitation. This can be applied to recycling batches of feedstock of variable size, purity, or composition, and ultimately to raw material processing, utilizing about 25% of annual magnet production available for recycling. We expect to recover over 90% of REEs with more than 99% purity in five cycles, compared to 50-100 cycles in conventional methods, thus saving time and money and allowing to recover 25% of EU's annual REE demand from recycled sources. Our consortium is composed of renowned scientists in magnetism, electrochemistry, and hydrometallurgy, and two promising SMEs, which will be key to our success.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- engineering and technology environmental engineering waste management waste treatment processes recycling
- natural sciences chemical sciences electrochemistry
- engineering and technology electrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineering electronic engineering robotics autonomous robots drones
- engineering and technology electrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineering information engineering telecommunications mobile phones
- engineering and technology medical engineering diagnostic imaging
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Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.3.1 - The European Innovation Council (EIC)
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Topic(s)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
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Call for proposal
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) HORIZON-EIC-2025-PATHFINDEROPEN
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Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
75794 Paris
France
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.