Birmingham scientists find new technique to make gadget recycling greener

Scientists from the University of Birmingham have found an innovative way to recycle the very important metals used in almost every type of modern gadgets, mostly aluminium and rare earth metals.

It is an innovation that could have huge implications for the tech industry and also from the point of view of environmental footprint.

Most of the digital gadgets like mobile phones to computer hard drives make vital use of magnets made of "rare earth metals". At present most of these rare earth metals are supplied by China. So, a way to recover those metals successfully from the scrapped gadgets will be much greener. This will also secure the source of essential raw material for the manufacturers reducing the dependence on Chinese supply.

Prof Rex Harris from the University of Birmingham is the brain behind finding this innovative solution.  Through his research years ago, he discovered that passing hydrogen over a rare earth magnet expands the magnet turning it into a powdered form. The resulting powder is not magnetic and does not stick to other materials, which make the recovery much easier.



The research finding has become more relevant at present as rare earths have become a key material in modern life gadgets. Dr Alan Walton and his team at the University of Birmingham have used this as their little recycling secret and managed to recycle rare earths on a considerable scale.

Currently, the researchers are focusing on recycling computer hard drives and about 100 million of hard drives get recycled per year to recover the aluminium they contain. The rare earths stick to everything in the scrap and have been practically impossible to recover.

Under this recycling project a robot is created that can identify the corner of each hard drive where about 25g of rare earth magnets are buried. Those corners are then put into a big drum (a washing machine tub!) and hydrogen gas is passed over them. The rare earth magnets turn to powder and loose the magnetic quality and tumbling the drum out drops all the powder. The end product can be re-used as the first ever rare earth magnets produced from recycling.

The recovered rare earth materials are not only environment friendly but can also be relevant from the commercial point of view. They can also secure material source for the manufacturers, offer firms new revenue potential and cut down on outsourced material. So this technology is expected to draw interests of the companies for commercial use by the next year.