Rare Earth Exchanges

Maximizing Rare-Earth Recovery from E-Waste: A Case Study on Hard Disk Drives

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Highlights

  • Research reveals shredding causes significant material loss:
    • 73.9% for Rare Earth Elements (REEs)
    • 43.8% for gold
  • Manual disassembly preserves NdFeB magnets and minimizes oxidation.
  • Manual disassembly offers superior REE and gold recovery.
  • Study emphasizes critical need for optimized e-waste recycling strategies to enhance critical raw material utilization.

The growing demand for rare-earth elements (REEs) and their limited supply have highlighted the importance of secondary sources like electronic waste (e-waste), including discarded hard disk drives (HDDs). This latest study  published in the Journal of Material Cycles and Waste Management (opens in a new tab) compares two pre-treatment methods—shredding and manual disassembly—for recovering REEs and gold (Au) from HDDs, focusing on efficiency and material preservation.

A trio of authors are behind this study including Mertol Gökelma, (opens in a new tab) Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Izmir Institute of Technology (opens in a new tab), Izmir in  the far west of Turkey and colleagues.

What were Key Findings?

  1. Material Loss: Shredding, a common e-waste processing method, causes substantial losses—73.9% for REEs and 43.8% for Au—due to oxidation and fine particle dispersion.
  2. Efficiency of Manual Disassembly: Manual disassembly preserves clean NdFeB magnets, allowing for direct recycling and minimizing oxidation.
  3. Separation Techniques: Shredded HDDs require additional processes like sieving, density, and magnetic separation, which still fail to match the efficiency of manual methods.

Implications

While shredding is effective for recovering ferrous and aluminum components, manual disassembly is critical for maximizing REE and Au recovery, essential for sustainable resource utilization and reducing supply risks of critical raw materials. This study underscores the need for optimized e-waste processing strategies to enhance REE recovery.

Note that author Mertol Gökelma in addition to the affiliation with the university is the co-founder of Waste Cycles Recycling Technologies.

Waste-Cycles R&D branch activities are project development, scaling up recycling processes, pilot mass production, planning/following up field studies and meeting their requirements within the framework of international regulations and guidelines. Waste-Cycles R&D branch aims to offer innovative sustainable high technology solutions for recovery of critical raw materials regarding with the industrial wastes particularly electronic items.

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