News

Visual: Bronneberg’s REEPRODUCE pilot installation for the  extraction and processing of Nd-magnet-containing components from end-of-life  products.

Bronneberg focuses on developing and building a system to extract Nd magnets from end-of-life products. FAU and Bronneberg have developed pilot units to extract Nd-based magnet blocks from selected end-of-life products, and then motor-processing lines were upscaled and integrated into a mobile container with automation for validation activities.

Bronneberg has successfully built up this pilot plant and obtained promising results from the test trials, showing that the project is moving from laboratory development toward pilot-scale implementation. During testing, it was found that it is very difficult to extract rotors from EV drive trains in one piece without intensive manual labour. Optimization of this operation was not foreseen in the REEPRODUCE project, and only the extraction of magnet block from the rotor units was the focus of Bronneberg’s activities.

The outcome of the trial runs carried out in REEPRODUCE confirmed the importance of keeping the rotor intact. This is mainly for two reasons. First, the process uses an induction coil to heat up the rotor stack, and the geometry of the rotor directly affects how well the induction coil works. Second, a sieve is then used to separate the Nd magnets from the Fe-stack. When the rotor is deformed, the Nd magnets can be pressed into the stack, making the separation of the materials much more difficult.

As lessons learned from the successful accomplishment of REEPRODUCE objectives, Bronneberg will continue to improve the impact of the results by investigating a solution to extract rotors from EV drive trains in one piece in an automated way. Improving this step is essential, because it will allow more rotors to be prepared for further processing in the REEPRODUCE pilot, and, consequently, more Nd magnets to be recovered. In this way, Bronnerberg’s work helps to bridge an important gap between the dismantling and the downstream material recovery within the REEPRODUCE value chain.

Material recovered during Bronneberg’s pilot trials, showing processed fractions (magnets) obtained after rotor treatment and separation steps.