Economically Recovering Rare Earth Materials

This Phase I SBIR Project seeks to develop methods of recycling rare earth from spent strategic materials.Rare earth materials are critical for a broad range of technologies.Important industrial sectors such as defense, manufacturing, energy, transportation,and electronics all utilize rare earth materials in abundance.There are currently a limited number of economically viable sources of rare earths, making the recycling of rare earths an invaluable practice to industry.However, presently only a small percent of all rare earth minerals are recycled.Xylon Technical Ceramics has developed and patented a unique, environmentally friendly recycling technology that has the potential to be universally applicable to rare earth wastes. The proposed project would develop the utility of the process to extract the rare earth materials from both oxide catalyst and thermal barrier wastes, as well as metallic magnet wastes.Positive results from this project will comprise scalable manufacturing methods to recycle rare earths from catalysts, thermal barrier coatings, and spent magnets in a manner that offers an environmentally safe and economically viable way to conserve critical resources.Additionally, the development of this process may provide a basis around which to adapt and create processing technologies for other rare earth recycling challenges.