Rare Earths (RE) are crucial materials for Europe's successful green and digital transition, thus classified as highly critical. The market for RE magnets itself is relatively small - about €6.5 billion - however its downstream leverage is enormous: the mobility business in the EU27 alone is expected to grow to about €500 billion by 2030, with 6 million jobs. While being a world leader in the manufacturing of e.g. electric motors, the EU27 is fully import-dependent along the entire value chain of RE magnet materials. Despite a growing market, European magnet production capacity is underutilised and tends to serve specialised niche applications. In addition, RE magnets are increasingly imported as part of motors and generator assemblies and products. The main reasons for these developments are that China has a monopoly in the RE supply chain across all stages from mining to refining. To overcome this issue, REEsilience will categorise RE for geographic locations, quantities, chemical composition, ethical and sustainable indicators, ramp-up scenarios, and pricing, considering all value streams from virgin to secondary material. It will build a production system that ensures a resilient and sustainable supply chain for RE as critical raw materials for the e-mobility, renewable energy and further strategic sectors in Europe with less dependencies on non-European economies. A newly-developed software tool will determine optimum mixing ratios to ensure consistently high product quality with maximum secondary materials for high-tech applications. Combined with new and improved technologies for alloy production and powder preparation, especially of secondary materials, the yield and stability of processes will be further enhanced, allowing further augmentation of the proportion of secondary materials in RE PM production, reducing at the same time waste, environmental damage, and consumption of energy linked with virgin production.

The aim of this project is to develop a recycling supply chain for rare earth magnets in the EU and to demonstrate these new materials on a pilot scale within a range of application sectors. Rare earth magnets based upon neodymium-iron-boron (NdFeB, also containing dysprosium) are used in a wide range of products, including for example clean energy technologies (wind turbines and electric vehicles) and high tech sectors such as electronics. However in recent years the supply of these materials has come under considerable pressure and neodymium and dysprosium are now deemed to be of greatest supply risk for all elements. The EU imports far more NdFeB magnets than it manufactures (>1,000 tonnes manufactured per annum). It has been estimated that ~ 2,000-3,000 tonnes/annum of NdFeB will be available by 2020 for recycling, which presents a significant opportunity. The aim of this project is to identify, separate, recycle and demonstrate recycled magnets at a pilot scale with a multidisciplinary team located across the EU. The project will target three of the main application sectors including automotive, electronics and wind turbines. The project will develop new sensing and robotic sorting lines for the identified EoL products, building upon technologies developed in the FP7 project Remanence. New hydrogen based technologies will be demonstrated at scale for separating and purifying NdFeB powders from the robotically sorted parts and this technology will be duplicated at another partner in the project. The separated powders will be re-manufactured into sintered magnets, injection moulded magnets, metal injection moulded magnets and cast alloys, at 4 different companies across 3 countries, building upon work in the Repromag Horizon 2020 project. A techno economic assessment will be performed for each potential recycling route alongside a life cycle assessment to assess the environmental benefits over primary production.

As a response to the need to decrease the transportation related emissions and energy consumption, today, all major passenger car and other light-duty vehicle manufacturers are broadening their electric vehicle portfolio. The dependency of the present electrical traction motors on the rare materials, such as rare earth permanent magnet materials, namely Neodymium-Iron-Boron magnets, is problematic from several viewpoints: they are imported and expensive and there is a real risk for supply problems in the coming years. To strengthen the European competitiveness, VOLTCAR ('Design, manufacturing, and validation of ecocycle electric traction motor') proposes high-speed, permanent magnet assisted synchronous reluctance technology with a drastic reduction in rare materials' utilisation. During VOLTCAR, the motor prototype is perfected to meet the strictest performance requirements (power density, efficiency), sustainability criteria (recyclability, circularity and low use of rare resources and copper) and the expectations of the automotive sector (cost, reliability, integrability). This major goal is supported by introducing digital design and optimisation methodologies that are capable of assessing the life cycle costs, energy consumption, and carbon footprint in the early phase, guiding the outcomes towards maximised sustainability with reduced use of rare materials and efficient recycling and repurposing patterns. The validity of the VOLTCAR motor prototypes, 50 kW and 120 kW motor, and related technologies is proved according to the automotive standards, presenting an X-in-the-loop (XiL) experimentation environments. With this development, VOLTCAR will simultaneously lead to more green jobs in local SMEs throughout Europe to reduce unemployment rate. The VOLTCAR consortium comprises world-leading automotive Tier 1 and Tier 2 companies and research partners with complementary knowledge and expertise for the successful execution of the proposed work.

This multidisciplinary network entitled: “Magnetics and Microhydrodynamics - from guided transport to delivery” (MaMi) bridges the research fields of fluidics and magnetism, by taking advantage of magnetic forces to control local flows and cargo transport inspired by biomimetic systems. Using magnetic sources, as well as high magnetic susceptibility liquids or nanostructures, devices with unique anti-fouling properties and non-slip boundary conditions can be realized. Our scientific aim is to take advantage of such unique wall-less properties to create new applications of microfluidic technology for life sciences. The network assembles and interdisciplinary team of seven academic and five non-academic partners, exposes all students to industrial environments, and ensures training at the frontiers of two well-established research fields, which are not commonly associated. Over the course of their projects, early stage researchers based in academic institutions will experience working environments in at least 3 different countries. Training a new generation of researchers will bring new cutting-edge knowledge, and will ensure a high potential for industrial applications to promote EU leadership.