US-based Paladin to Build Recycling Network for Rare Earth Magnets from 500 Retired Wind Turbines

en.Wedoany.com Reported - On October 25, U.S. recycling company Paladin EnviroTech made new market progress in its end-of-life wind turbine rare earth recycling business. The company has established a potential recycling business channel covering approximately 500 retired wind turbine generator sets across the United States, and is collaborating with Iowa-based Critical Materials Recycling (CMR) to commercialize an acid-free dissolution process for extracting rare earth elements from end-of-life permanent magnets. Paladin expects that by 2027, magnets from retired wind turbines will account for approximately 40% of its total recycling throughput.

Paladin focuses on recycling neodymium, dysprosium and other rare earth magnet materials from retired wind turbine generators. Generators in some newer turbine models can contain nearly 1 tonne of rare earth materials, which the company estimates to be worth close to USD 100,000. Existing recycling operations involve large cranes to dismantle blades and nacelles, hydraulic shearing equipment to disassemble components, and heavy trucks for transport. Some turbine components weigh approximately 36 to 54 tonnes, placing high demands on lifting equipment, work sites and transport logistics.

On the feedstock recycling side, Paladin also purchases magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) equipment, electric vehicle motors and computer hard drives. The company expects that by 2027, wind turbine magnets will account for approximately 40% of its total recycling throughput, MRI equipment and EV motors approximately 25% each, and hard drives approximately 10%. These proportions represent the company's forecast of its future feedstock mix.

The rare earth extraction step is being advanced by partner CMR. Through the Recapture collaboration platform, the two parties combine Paladin's equipment dismantling and feedstock collection network with CMR's acid-free dissolution recycling technology. The technology originated at the U.S. Department of Energy's Ames National Laboratory and was developed by its Critical Materials research team, using aqueous media to selectively leach rare earth elements from end-of-life magnets.

Technical materials previously published by Ames National Laboratory show that the acid-free dissolution process achieved 98% rare earth recovery efficiency under specific e-waste experimental conditions, with rare earth oxide product purity exceeding 99.9%. These figures are laboratory technology validation results and cannot yet be directly regarded as industrial-scale actual operating metrics for Paladin's retired wind turbine recycling business.

In 2024, CMR received a USD 500,000 prize from the U.S. Department of Energy's wind turbine materials recycling competition and USD 100,000 in national laboratory technical support to advance wind turbine rare earth materials recycling. Paladin is currently expanding its end-of-life wind turbine dismantling and magnet feedstock recycling business. The subsequent commercialization scale will still depend on the number of recyclable turbine units, feedstock composition, processing costs and actual rare earth extraction capacity.