High Value Recycling Technology

Abstract

Rare earth magnets are manufactured in very large quantities for use in consumer products and industrial machinery. Computer hard disc drives (HDDs) and electric motors are among the many items that contain rare earth magnets. Almost 1 billion HDDs are manufactured annually, with ~50% deployed in data centers. Similarly, a very large number of HDDs are recycled annually by shredding. Shredding is an efficient and cost-effective means used in recycling large volumes of material, but separation of output is complicated. Large format (3.5”) HDDs consists of ~75.7% aluminum, ~13.3% steel, ~1.9% magnets, ~5.7% permalloy and ~3.4% printed circuit boards. Of these, aluminum and steel are the most recycled.