Project: Greener permanent magnets without or with less critical raw materials

Acronym	GENIUS (Reference Number: 76)
Duration	01/04/2024 - 01/03/2027
Project Topic	Permanent magnets (PM) are vital components of the green transition. PMs have a central role in renewable energy and sustainable mobility, and demand for high-quality PMs is ever increasing to enable the green transition. The best-performing PMs are based on REEs, while lower-performance PMs use ferrites. Due to the high performance of REE magnets, most modern devices employ them, as they are lighter and lead to better efficiency. Unfortunately, REEs are critical raw materials owing to their supply risk and price volatility, and also their harmful environmental impacts. GENIUS seeks to address the challenges brought forward in this call’s Topic 2: Strengthening the circular economy by substitution of critical materials in products and components by recycled REE-free or REE-lean magnets. To address these challenges, the magnets developed in GENIUS will be produced solely by recycling of injection moulded PM scrap material, with the recycling done in several stages, by milling, or milling followed by polymer removal and annealing to recover the magnetic properties of powders. The GENIUS project’s ambition is to develop recycled REE-free/REE-lean PMs by additive manufacturing coupled with novel consolidation techniques to reduce Europe’s dependency on REEs and enable the circular economy of materials and value. A primary focus is on making future PM manufacture sustainable and environmentally sound, and we are hoping long-term to reduce Europe´s import of REE by 3,800 tons/year, and have considerable economic and job growth impacts. As of 2022 only 12% of secondary materials and resources are brought back to the European economy with nearly no recycling or reuse of PMs at present. Our approach will establish innovative, functionally recyclable PM designs, circular paths, and efficient workflows scalable to industry scales leading to a future of more efficient REE-free motors
Network	ERA-MIN3
Call	ERA-MIN3 Joint Call 2023

Project partner

Number	Name	Role	Country
1	Jožef Stefan Institute	Coordinator	Slovenia
2	University of Nova Gorica	Partner	Slovenia
3	Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) Institute of Ceramics and Glass	Partner	Spain
4	Uppsala Universitet	Partner	Sweden
5	Kolektor Mobility d.o.o. R&D Magnetics	Partner	Slovenia