LG电子启动废旧家电压缩机稀土永磁体回收试点

LG Electronics has developed technology to recover rare-earth permanent magnets from compressors in discarded home appliances. The company aims to recycle about 1.6 tons of permanent magnets annually from roughly 40,000 discarded appliances.
LG Electronics said on Aug. 27 that it signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the Ministry of Climate, Energy and Environment and E-Circulation Governance at the Metropolitan Area Resource Circulation Center in Yongin, Gyeonggi Province, for a pilot project to recover discarded permanent magnets from refrigerant compressors in waste appliances.
The project focuses on separating and recovering rare-earth-containing permanent magnets when compressors from home appliances are discarded. Rare earths are minerals used in electric vehicles, industrial motors and home appliances.
Permanent magnets inside compressors have traditionally been difficult to separate because of their strong magnetic force. Some metals, including copper, have been recovered, while most permanent magnets have been recycled together with scrap metal.
LG Electronics developed a demagnetization technology that uses magnetic fields to remove the magnetic force from permanent magnets. Unlike conventional heat-treatment methods, the technology demagnetizes and separates magnets without a high-temperature process. This can reduce energy consumption and minimize heat-induced changes in the magnets' physical properties, increasing the recycling value of recovered magnets.
The company will also apply image analysis based on vision artificial intelligence (AI). The AI recognizes the size and shape of discarded compressors and analyzes the location of permanent magnets inside them, allowing an appropriate separation process to be applied to each product.
LG Electronics expects the pilot project to recover about 1.6 tons of rare-earth permanent magnets annually from roughly 40,000 discarded appliances. The recovered magnets will be used for purposes including the development of technologies to process them into raw materials for producing new magnets.
The project will also expand the range of resources recovered from discarded appliances beyond conventional materials such as iron, copper and aluminum to include rare-earth-containing permanent magnets.
"We will contribute to realizing a circular economy by recovering key materials from end-of-life products and putting them back to use," said Yang Hee-gu, head of the Production Innovation Center at LG Electronics' Production Engineering Research Institute. "We will also establish a foundation for the stable circular use of critical minerals for the future."