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As part of the European REEPRODUCE project, a system has been designed and developed for extracting Neodymium-rich (Nd) permanent magnets from subcomponents of hard disk drive (HDD) units.

The demonstration took place at the FAPS Institute of Friedrich-Alexander University in Erlangen-Nuremberg (Germany) and involved extracting Nd-PMs by separating them from the steel bases—known as “yokes”—that hold the magnets in hard drives. This was achieved using a demagnetisation system, resulting in two independent streams: magnets and yokes.

Various “yokes” with different measures.

The project’s goal is to recycle end-of-life magnets through a hydrometallurgical process followed by an electrolytic process. This requires that the input material consists exclusively of magnets, necessitating their extraction from the components to which they are attached within each device. Various system optimisation

parameters have been analysed, including the conveyor belt speed of the yokes, operating temperature, and the physical properties of the yokes themselves, among other factors.

The purpose of these tests is to determine how many yokes can be processed per hour, establish a correlation between speed, temperature, and yoke type, assess whether the integrated system resources are sufficient for industrial-scale operation, and evaluate if any further optimisation adjustments are needed.