European Training Network for the Design and Recycling of Rare-Earth Permanent Magnet Motors and Generators in Hybrid and Full Electric Vehicles (DEMETER)

On April 18, 2017, the VLAIO O&O ANTARES project kicked off at the premises of Campine in Beerse (Belgium). ANTARES targets high-grade antimony trioxide production from a diversified antimony-containing feed stream.

SIM² KU Leuven is happy to share the news that its ETN EREAN colleague at the Technical Unversity of Darmstadt (Germany), Prof. Oliver Gutfleisch, has been granted a prestigious ERC Advanced Grant on magnetocaloric cooling.

Steff Van Loy, Koen Binnemans & Tom Van Gerven (SIM² KU Leuven) achieved a milestone with respect to lamp phosphor recycling. Using ball milling they significantly enhanced the rare-earth leaching rates in the lamp phosphors.

In order to position this emerging branch within extraction metallurgy, Prof. Koen Binnemans and Dr. Peter Tom Jones (SIM² KU Leuven) have authored a milestone position paper to present the opportunities and challenges for this exciting development within the metallurgy domain.

On March 2017, 2017, SIM² KU Leuven will present two of its successful animation videos in the “Research Roulette" programme of the DOCVILLE (film) festival in Leuven. Both recycling of e-cars and Enhanced Landfill Mining feature!

The European Environmental Agency (EEA) recently published a milestone report on e-mobility in Europe. The report “focuses upon electric passenger vehicles, explaining the different types that are now available on the market, how each type works, and their respective advantages ...

University of Birmingham is launching an ambitious new Centre. The Centre will be known as “the Birmingham Centre for Strategic Elements and Critical Materials” (BCSECM). This new interdisciplinary centre encompasses a diverse range of expertise including capabilities in physical sciences, ...

On March 10, 2017, Mehmet Recai Önal defended his PhD degree at KU Leuven. He obtained this degree in the framework of the EU FP7 Training Network Project, EREAN, i.e. the European Rare Earth (Magnet) Recycling Network.

The Journal of Sustainable Metallurgy has just published its thematic section on “Green Rare Earth Elements” (Vol 3, Nr 1). The thematic section features a number of innovations with respect to REE production and recycling.

On March 8, 2017, the kick-off meeting of EU H2020 NEOHIRE took place in Brussels. NEOHIRE's core objective is to reduce the use of rare earths (REE), Co and Ga in the permanent magnets used in wind turbine generators.