Within the EU H2020 REMAGHIC project, a process was developed by KU Leuven & TECNALIA to recover rare earths from CRT phosphor waste based on roasting and leaching with the green solvents acetic acid and methanesulphonic acid.

New work by SIM² KU Leuven researchers published in Resources Conservation and Recycling demonstrates that the government policies have a much larger influence on the rare-earth supply chain disruption than physical disruptions.

The EIT-labelled Master Programme on Sustainable Materials (SUMA) welcomed 24 enthusiastic students in September 2018. This 3rd cohort is the biggest cohort for SUMA so far, with selected candidates coming from all over the world.

Gwen Bailey, ESR 15 in EU MSCA-ETN DEMETER, was selected as the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Association Fellow of the Week. Gwen will feature in the panel debate “Are REEs still critical?” in the DEMETER Symposium (February 2019).

On 12-11-2018, NEMO, CROCODILE and DEMETER were presented at the 2nd annual Critical Raw Materials (CRMs) event, which was co-organised by the European Commission and the H2020 project SCRREEN during the Raw Materials Week.

Following their milestone achievements on rare earth (RE) high-performance magnets, Prof. Gutfleisch et al. (TU Darmstadt) published a landmark paper on the vision and reality of heavy RE-free, free RE and RE-free magnets.

The extraction of lanthanides from nitrate media with basic nitrate extractants shows a remarkable decreasing trend when going from left to right in the lanthanide series. The Binnemans SOLVOMET group is taking the first step.

Within the EU Remaghic project, new REEs and Mg recovery processes have been developed from a selection of waste streams in order to produce new low cost competitive alloys for the automotive, biomedical and aeronautic industry.

ETN DEMETER (Design and Recycling of Rare-Earth Permanent Magnet Motors and Generators in Hybrid and Full Electric Vehicles) organises the DEMETER Closing Symposium in Feb’ 2019 (together with SIM² KU Leuven, GloREIA and Valeo).

Following the success of the Raw Materials Week 2017, the 3rd edition of the EU "Raw Materials Week", organised by the European Commission, will take place from Monday 12 to Friday 16 November 2018 in Brussels.