Automotive

American Elements researchers first confirmed that in its present form, NdFeB scrap could not be reprocessed to produce an acceptable magnetic alloy. A strategic plan was designed to research if a cost effective process could be designed to extract the rare earth components from the scrap for reuse. The alloy also contains valuable dysprosium, so a further challenge was extracting both the neodymium and the dysprosium in a usable form. To meet the needs of this rapidly growing industry, American Elements researchers developed a proprietary inorganic acid-base extraction scheme to recover the neodymium and the dysprosium in a high purity mixed rare earth chloride solution which could be further processed into a mixed rare earth fluoride; the starting material for producing virgin NdFeB alloy. The neodymium and dysprosium could also be separated in the chloride form using solvent extraction.