Applicability of Direct Reuse and Recycled Rare Earth Magnets in Electro-mobility

Volatile prices and severe supply-demand issues have led to the development of a significant research area in terms of reuse and recycle of rare earth permanent magnets. Another reason for the proliferation of this research is the increased emphasis on environmental impacts of rare earth material mining which can be substantially reduced by reuse and recycling. This paper develops a methodology and analysis tool to apply direct reuse and recycled rare earth magnets into electro-mobility. Easy assembly and disassembly of permanent magnets has been presented for a permanent magnet based claw-pole machine so as to directly reuse the recovered magnets. Secondly, utilization of recycled magnets fabricated by hydrogen decrepitation in the claw-pole machine has been analyzed and compared with a machine with virgin magnets. Energy consumption of the machine with virgin and recycled magnet have been evaluated for two vehicle drive cycles and it is observed that the consumption is almost the same for the machine with both magnet types. The results indicate that new age electrical machines for this application of electro-mobility can utilize recycled magnets which in turn lead to lesser impacts on the environment due to reduced mining of new rare earth minerals.