Last September 10th, the REMAGIHC consortium met in Brussels to kick-off the project. All partners gathered at Covenant Building, headquarters of DG RTD, to present the working plan and the tasks to be carried out during the first year of the project.
REMAGHIC, New Recovery Processes to produce Rare Earth-Magnesium Alloys of High Performance and Low Cost, aims at contributing to Europe’s rare earth recovery and magnesium recycling technologies, improving the efficiencies of these processes and advancing the technology readiness levels for a new generation of industrial processes that will produce new low cost competitive alloys for a wide variety of sectors across Europe’s manufacturing value chain.
All partners introduced their companies to the EC Project Officer, highlighting their respective role in the project: Fraunhofer ICT, Fundación TECNALIA, Catholic University of Leuven, Grupo Antolin, Relight, ITRB, Piaggio Aero, Pininfarina and Meotec are coordinated by Fundación CIDAUT.
During the meeting, all work package leaders presented their work plan for the first year of the project. REMAGHIC will start by defining the best way to recover the rare earth elements from industrial wastes, and the magnesium alloy from the scrap, dross & slug. The specific REE will be then used to alloy with recycled magnesium in order to obtain cheaper alloys to be used by Grupo Antolin in their casting facilities and tested to check they achieve with the end users request.
At the same time, the dissemination activities started by defining the project logo and the contents on the public website. This work package is also responsible for setting the Advisory Board; this is formed by industries interested in REMAGHIC results, and will act as test ground for the application of the developed framework and specific applications.
On the following month REMAGHIC consortium will start updating the public website with news related to REE recovery as well as the partial results achieved by the project. Once the public deliverables are approved by the EC, they will also be uploaded in the website. So do not forget to follow from December 2015 on our website in order to be updated on REMAGHIC!