• Journal of Institute of Convergence Technology
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.13-17
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• 2011

The car industry is one of the technological applications which more rare earth metals employes as three-way catalysts. Therefore, the recovery of rare earth metals from the used automotive three-way catalysts could be important source to obtain these metals. This work presents the analysis of market and demand for rare earth metal in automotive three-way catalyst and introduces the dry and the wet processes for the recovery of rare earth metals from used three-way catalyst. Finally, the alternative methods to conventional wet processes was simply suggested based on the economic and ecological point of view.

• Resources Recycling
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.74-83
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• 2012

Rare earth metals have been made from rare earth compounds which were prepared from rare earth ore concentrates through successive processes such as leaching(i.e. extraction of rare earth elements to liquid media), separation, purification, precipitation. Here, process for treating monazite and bastnasite ore concentrates were briefly reviewed, and metallothermic reduction and fused salt electrolysis methods were introduced as the extraction technologies for rare earth metals.

• Journal of Powder Materials
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• v.30 no.2
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• pp.101-106
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• 2023

Liquid metal extraction (LME), a pyrometallurgical recycling method, is popular owing to its negligible environmental impact. LME mainly targets rare-earth permanent magnets having several rare-earth elements. Mg is used as a solvent metal for LME because of its selective and eminent reactivity with rare-earth elements in magnets. Several studies concerning the formation of Dy-Fe intermetallic compounds and their effects on LME using Mg exist. However, methods for reducing these compounds are unavailable. Fe reacts more strongly with B than with Dy; B addition can be a reducing method for Dy-Fe intermetallic compounds owing to the formation of Fe₂B, which takes Fe from Dy-Fe intermetallic compounds. The FeB alloy is an adequate additive for the decomposition of Fe₂B. To accomplish the former process, Mg must convey B to a permanent magnet during the decomposition of the FeB alloy. Here, the effect of Mg on the transfer of B from FeB to permanent magnet is observed through microstructural and phase analyses. Through microstructural and phase analysis, it is confirmed that FeB is converted to Fe₂B upon B transfer, owing to Mg. Finally, the transfer effect of Mg is confirmed, and the possibility of reducing Dy-Fe intermetallic compounds during LME is suggested.

• KEPCO Journal on Electric Power and Energy
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.121-125
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• 2015

Distribution of rare earth metals (REMs) and rare valuable metals (RVMs) contents in coal ashes (fly ash, bottom ash, and pond ash) and leachate from 11 coal-fired power plants in Korea were investigated. Coal ashes and leachates were found to contain important REMs and RVMs such as Yttrium (Y) and Neodymium (Nd), which was in the range of 23~75 mg/kg. However, it still requires developing effective recovery and separation methods in order to utilize REMs and RVMs in ash and leachate. Recovery of valuable elements (Y and Nd) from various and extensive ash sources (8.21 million tons/year in 2013) can provide the existing power plants with additional profit; therefore, it can significantly improve economics of the power plants.

• 한국지구물리탐사학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2003.11a
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• pp.563-568
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• 2003

Recently, the recycled amount of electric, mechanical parts, and appliances in artifacts has increased. These products use valuable rare metals such as platinum group metals and gold, which are included occasionally as additives. Rare metals are maldistributed in the world and most of them are produced in small quantities. A small amount of rare metals used in the appliances causes a large loss of rare metal resources because of the lack of an economically recycling method. The present recycling technologies including physical and chemical separation methods that are considered for recycling of electric, mechanical parts and appliances.

• Resources Recycling
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• v.27 no.3
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• pp.48-57
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• 2018

In this study, we developed a method for manufacturing high strength gray cast irons by adding a rare earth element (R.E.) included in a spent permanent magnet scrap to gray cast irons. The improvement of the mechanical properties of gray cast irons is attributed to A-type graphite formation promoted by complex sulfide, which was formed by R.E. in the spent magnets during a solidification process. The cast specimen inoculated by R.E. in the spent magnet scrap showed excellent tensile strength up to 306 MPa, and is similar to that of the specimen inoculated by expensive misch-metal. In this regards, we concluded that the cheap spent magnets scrap is a very efficient inoculation agent in fabrication of high performance gray cast irons.

• Journal of the Microelectronics and Packaging Society
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.1-9
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• 2011

Rare metals, called as vitamins of industry, are defined as the elements which are very few in the earth and are difficult to extract from ores. The requirements for total amounts of rare metals have increased as the global economics grows and the function of electronic components varies considerably. The rare metals have been maldistributed to America, CIS(Commonwealth of Independent States), China, Australia, Canada as about 80% of total natural resources, which also lead to unequal materials flow or distribution. Therefore, it was needed to investigate the feature of rare metals in terms of industry as well as technology. We could identify the industrial issues associated with the supply of critical rare elements in electronic components.

• Journal of Powder Materials
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.27-31
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• 2015

Flat panel display devices are mainly used as information display devices in the 21st century. The worldwide waste flat panel displays are expected at 2-3 million units but most of them are land-filled for want of a proper recycling technology More specifically, rare earth metals of La and Eu are used as fluorescent materials of Cold Cathode Flourscent Lamp(CCFL)s in the waste flat panel displays and they are critically vulnerable and irreplaceable strategic mineral resources. At present, most of the waste CCFLs are disposed of by land-filling and incineration and proper recovery of 80-plus tons per annum of the rare earth fluorescent materials will significantly contribute to steady supply of them. A dearth of Korean domestic research results on recovery and recycling of rare earth elements in the CCFLs prompts to initiate this status report on overseas research trends and noteworthy research results in related fields.

• Proceedings of the Korean Magnestics Society Conference
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• 2013.12a
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• pp.89-89
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• 2013

Rare earth (RE) - transition metal based high energy density magnets are of immense significance in various engineering applications. $Nd_2Fe_{14}B$ magnets possess the highest energy product and are widely used in whole industries. Simultaneously, composite alloys that are cheap, cost effective and strong commercially available have drawn great attention, because rare-earth metals are costly, less abundant and strategic shortage. We designed rare-earth free alloys and fabrication process and developed novel route to prepare $Nd_2Fe_{14}B$ powders by wet process employing spray drying and reduction-diffusion (R-D) without the use of high purity metals as raw material. MnAl-base permanent magnetic powders are potentially important material for rare-earth free magnets. We have prepared the nano-sized MnAl powders by plasma arc discharge and micron-sized MnAl powders by gas atomization. They showed good magnetic property, compared with that from conventional processes. $Nd_2Fe_{14}B$ powders with high coercivity of more than 10 kOe were successfully synthesized by adjusting R-D step, followed by precise washing system. It is considered that this process can be applied for the recycling of RE-elements extracted from ewaste including motors.

• Resources Recycling
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• v.27 no.3
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• pp.66-77
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• 2018

The import amount of rare metal in Korea is about 6,034 million USD, but the self-sufficiency of rare metals is about only 1%. In order to secure the stable supply of rare metals, it is necessary to operate an efficient stockpile system. In this study, we established a system to assess the adequacy of stockpiles by quantifying the risk factors of tangible and intangible risks in order to establish an efficient stockpile strategy. The model developed in this study aims to select the rare metals that need to be stockpiled first and to suggest the direction of the stockpiling policy in accordance with technological change and market change from the mid and long term viewpoint. The evaluation results derived from the model can quantitatively measure the security level of each rare metal and enable relative comparison between the rare metals using criticality matrix. Therefore, it is expected that more efficient stockpile policy will be possible if the proposed model is utilized in the future policy making.