Remaghic, two years running!

Last September in San Sebastian, the Remaghic Project partners held the 24 month meeting general assembly. During the last months many decisions have been taken on the best chain of processes to recycle rare earths and on the design of the currently manufactured facility to recycle Mg and produce the Remaghic magnesium alloy. Currently, casting tests with different alloying elements have been done, corrosion and mechanical testing campaigns are ongoing, and the project faces the last project year where the industrial validation and the LCA will highlight the results achieved.

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The meeting took place on the 20th and 21st of September. During the first day, the meeting was focused on the last activities done to recycle rare earths from different residue streams (WP1), on the update of the alloy development (WP3), and on the industrial facility that has been designed and manufactured to enable magnesium foundries recycle in house their own scraps and drosses (WP4). Currently, the Remaghic Cosnortium is looking for partners to test this facility, if you are interested, contact us at remaghic@cidaut.es. The last part of the first day was dedicated to the LCA analysis of the different ongoing processes in the project.

The second project day was fully dedicated to the Dissemination, Communication and Exploitation work package. Now that results are on the table, Remaghic partners are making an effort to contribute with their knowledge on recycling processes to Europe’s scientific and manufacturing community. To mention one example, Cidaut presented the results and next steps for the Remaghic project at the International Magnesium Association European Committee Meeting last 25th of October held at Brunel University (BCAST) London. In November Remaghic project parntes will be also taking part at the23rd SETAC Europe LCA Case Studies Symposium with two posters respectively dedicated to rare earth elements recycling and magnesium recycling methodologies. The Symposium, organized by the International Life Cycle Academy will take place in Barcelona, meet us there!

 

Remaghic Mid Term Review and upcoming events

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Partners of the Remaghic project met at the European Commission the past 2nd of February to present the project status after eighteen months of research. The project so far has developed a magnesium recycling methodology for magnesium scrap and scum with the collaboration of CIDAUT with Grupo Antolín, in which recycling efficiencies of 80% have been achieved. This work done at laboratory level will be upscaled in the second half of the project to reach a TRL of 7.

A lot of effort in the Remaghic project has been devoted to the recycling rare earths. Different processes are featured in the project, from solvent extraction, hydrometallurgical treatments, thermal and pyrometallurgical treatments and molten salt extraction. These processes have been combined and intertwined to optimize efficiencies and yields and the work done on each selected residue stream will be soon presented at the European Rare Earth Resources (ERES) conference next May in Santorini, Greece by partners of the Remaghic Consortium Tecnalia, KU Leuven and Relight.

The involvement of the project end users has proven to be very important in the alloy requirement definition in order to help focus the rare earth recycling processes to the specific elements that have been selected to improve the recycled magnesium mechanical performance.

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Finally, Life Cycle Analysis has endeavored to look at each of the processes and their environmental indicators. Merging different processes, at different technology readiness status, and balancing technical, economical and environmental indicators is a complex task coming ahead for this project in which the life cycle analysis and life cycle costing analysis will play an important role to guide the decisions that the project will need to take.

For more information on Remaghic, please visit http://www.remaghic-project.eu/

To know more about the ERES conference, please visit http://eres2017.eresconference.eu/

Cidaut takes part at EU MSCA-ETN DEMETER Summer School

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H2020 Remaghic project, coordinated by CIDAUT is one of the co-organizers of the event led by the EU MSCA-ETN DEMETER initiative (European Training Network for the Design and Recycling of Rare-Earth Permanent Magnet Motors and Generators in Hybrid and Full Electric Vehicles), together with KU Leuven Arenberg Doctoral School and the RARE³ KU Leuven cluster. The aim of this Summer School is to bring 50-60 PhD students and postdocs together to learn and discuss about the “Design and Recycling of Rare-Earth Permanent Magnet Motors and Generators in Hybrid and Full Electric Vehicles. The lecturers are world class experts.

Taking part from the 24th to the 26th of August, the topics that have been covered in this summer school include: rare earths applications, REEs in magnesium alloys, rare earths recycling and the balance problem, recovery of REEs from electronic waste to name but those most related to Remaghic.

CIDAUT’s lecture started from the Remaghic idea of recycling magnesium and alloying it to recycled rare earths to obtain a cost competitive Mg-REE alloy from secondary sources with the performance of a primary alloy. Magnesium is a challenging material in terms of manufacturing. In this regard, CIDAUT has taken part in the ALIVE project developing new manufacturing technologies based on magnesium casting that can produce high quality complex parts that comply with strict structural requirements. The Remaghic project will finalize with the construction of an industrial magnesium recycling facility which will be installed at Grupo Antolín Magnesio premises, one of the lead magnesium founders worldwide, and will demonstrate the feasibility of obtaining high performance competitive magnesium alloys from secondary raw materials, thus enforcing the circular economy within Europe and lessening our dependence from exterior sources.

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The first REMAGHIC General Meeting takes place at CIDAUT facilities (Spain) on 24-25 February 2016

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All partners of the REMAGHIC project (except Piaggio and Pininfarina, and the latter joined by webmeeting) gathered in Valladolid (Spain) to review the work done during the first six months of the project. During this period the main work has been focused on WP 1 and WP2, which are related with the recovery of REE and magnesium from industrial waste input. WP5 LCCA models development has already been kicked off during this time and Dissemination & Communication activities (WP6) and Management (WP7) will take place along all the project progress.

During the meeting a general revision of the status of the project was done. Each WP leader presented the work that had been developed, and any question or doubt was solved at the moment.

REMAGHIC meeting hold 24-25 February 2016 CIDAUT facilities.

As a complement to the project during this meeting, two workshops took place. The first one was planned to give the entire consortium a first approach of the work which is expected to be done by each partner in the WP5 (Life Cycle assessment of the process). This first workshop focused mainly on explaining why good quality information is really important for the success of the project. The second workshop was about the Risk Management of the project. This workshop had two parts, a theoretical one, and a practical session, in which all the partners worked actively to identify and classify all the risks related to WP1, WP3 and WP5.

During this meeting the consortium was able to visit CIDAUT facilities: on the first day meeting, the facilities related with the project (magnesium casting facilities, microstructure characterization laboratory and mechanical properties laboratory) were shown and on the second day a brief tour to show all the capabilities of the center was organized.

The REMAGHIC project was invited to the SPIRE Impact Workshop 2016

The European Commission has officially invited REMAGHIC to be present during the 2nd  SPIRE Impact Workshop, on 21-22 April 2016 in Brussels. REMAGHIC will be one of the 16 projects that will be presented at the Session3: Efficient Sustainability and Circular Economy – Domain1: Recovery from Waste). If you want to know more about our research, contact us or meet us there and let’s discuss ideas together.

Remaghic general meeting

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The REMAGHIC project continues its journey. On the 1st of February started the sixth month of work. Work packages 1 and 2, are in full swing, with the analysis of the main sources of waste, and at the same time preliminary work with the life-cycle assessment (WP5) has begun. All these tasks have been accompanied by the management and dissemination and communication works (WP6 and Wp7).

On 24th– 25th of February 2016 the general meeting of all the consortium will be held at CIDAUT Foundation facilities, CIDAUT is the project coordinator. The meeting will focus on reviewing the status of the work performed and planning tasks for the next 6 months including an overview of next year.

Complementing all these activities, this meeting will be used to perform two workshops, one about LCCA and other about risk management.

In addition, attendees will have the opportunity to visit the facilities of CIDAUT Foundation.