Simulation and Economical Analysis of Hydro-Nd Process for the Recovery of Rare Earth from End-of-Life Permanent Magnets: NEW-RE and INSPIREE projects

The growing demand for rare earth elements (REEs) and sustainable development issues have made the REEs recovery from permanent magnets (PMs) attract the attention of many researchers in the last decade. The NEW-RE and INSPIREE projects have been introduced to evaluate the recovery of REE elements from permanent magnets on a pilot and industrial scale. In this research, the economic aspect of the mentioned projects was performed using SuperPro software. The main aim of the work is to highlight the critical aspects of the process for a targeted optimization. The results showed that the CAPEX and OPEX for treating 3,600 tons/year of permanent magnets are 9 and 110 million euros, respectively, and an EBITDA of 4.8 million euros can be achieved (payback period less than two years). In the economic model, the cost of spent PMs was considered equal to 50% of its REEs value (14,251 €/ton). Also, it was found that the main OPEX costs are raw materials (65%) and energy (16%), respectively. It needs to be pointed out that the maximum price of permanent magnets can be 15,230 €/ton (BEP).