Recycling Rare Earth Elements from Junk

Technology, because it is advancing so quickly and new products are coming out every year, people dispose of their old ones. Yet, recycling companies will actually shred entire hard disk drives and sell the metals as scrap metals. The rare earth elements within that scrap metal end up in landfills. So, if we can recycling it, we can reclaim a lot of that value.

We recycle rare earth elements extracted from electronics. Right now, we are focusing on computer hard disk drives.

There are two parts to the technology involved. First is the mechanical side, which is taking apart the hard disk drive. We do that through an automated mechanical process at high speed.

The second part of the process is the chemical process. That is where the magnets are ground up into a powder. They then go into a chemical reactor and through that chemical process the rare earth elements are refined.

Most of the rare earth elements right now are mined in China. By recycling the rare earth elements from electronic products. We are creating a domestic supply right here in the U.S.