Rare Earth Magnet Recycling is Key to a Wind-Powered Future
August, 2023
Over the past decade, you may have noticed a surge in wind turbines popping up across the United States, from California to Texas to Illinois to New York, standing tall as harbingers of our clean energy future. It’s predicted that wind power will be a viable source of renewable energy in all 50 states by 2050.
As one of the fastest-growing energy sources in the world, these wind turbines offer a multitude of benefits. Most notably, wind power is a clean and abundant renewable energy source that can generate electricity without burning any fossil fuels or releasing harmful air pollution. But beyond the health and environmental upside, wind power is a highly cost-effective energy source that helps fuel our economy by creating good-paying jobs.
The Rise of Wind Power
However, America’s wind power revolution doesn’t come without challenges of its own, including the fact that wind turbines have a finite lifespan of approximately 20 years. What happens to these massive structures, and the critical components they contain, when they can no longer generate power?
Modern-day wind turbines contain significant quantities of high-performance neodymium (NdFeB) permanent magnets that are used to increase power generation and reduce maintenance frequency. As the world electrifies and transitions to renewable energy, these rare earth elements, which are critical building blocks of not just wind turbines but all technologies that contain an electric motor, are in high demand. In fact, industry experts at Adamas Intelligence forecast that global demand for rare earth magnets will increase by a 7.5% compounded annual rate through 2035. Because new rare earth mines are expected to be unable to keep up with this demand, there will be a shortage of 66,000 tons annually by 2030 and 206,000 tons annually by 2035 – nearly one-third of the total market.
There is currently no organized mechanism to recover or recycle these rare earth magnets when wind turbines ultimately need to be replaced, whether that be because they’ve reached the end of their lifespan, need to be upgraded to increase capacity, or undergo a catastrophic event. As a result, by the time wind becomes a more viable renewable energy source nationwide, it is also estimated that more than 2 million tons of wind turbine blades, and the valuable rare earth magnets and metals they contain, will be dumped in U.S landfills each year. That is, unless we can establish a circular economy that can recover and recycle the building blocks of end-of-life turbines to re-enter our domestic renewable energy supply chain instead of being scrapped or sent overseas.
The Challenges with Wind Turbine Recycling
That’s where we come in. At Noveon Magnetics, we’re on a mission to create a closed-loop supply chain for the end-of-life rare earth magnets found in wind turbines and a host of other clean energy economy technologies. With our patented M2M recycling technology, it is newly possible to recover NdFeB magnets from end-of-life wind turbines, extract the rare earth minerals and alloys, and manufacture them into new magnets that are even more powerful than those they replace.
While Noveon has cracked the code on rare earth magnet recycling technology, there is still more work to do in establishing a circular economy for wind power. One key issue is that the majority of scrappers who are responsible for dismantling and discarding end-of-life wind turbines are unfamiliar with rare earth magnets and the opportunities that currently exist for recycling them. This lack of awareness leads many to overlook the magnetic material contained in end-of-life turbines and either discard it in landfills or send the material overseas, thereby furthering China’s rare earth monopoly and the resulting supply chain challenges plaguing the industry.
Our current goal is to work alongside wind power manufacturers to implement better tracking and organization of turbine scrap materials to allow for greater recycling of rare earth magnets and magnetic material in the United States. These circular solutions will not only reduce waste, but also help wean our dependence on China for critical building blocks of renewable energy infrastructure and allow us to meet the demand for rare earth magnets without exclusively relying on environmentally harmful mining processes.
Wind power will allow us to unlock a low-carbon, clean energy future – and rare earth magnets hold the key. That’s why we are proud to play a role in establishing a circular economy that can help meet the demands of the wind revolution while reducing waste, mitigating environmental impact, and strengthening U.S. resource independence, one magnet at a time.
Noveon Magnetics’ Work Towards a Solution