Brazil begins developing rare-earth alloys

You’ve probably never heard of neodymium, but the metal is the basis of supermagnets used in a variety of products – from personal computers to electric motors, generators and wind turbines. Three times as powerful as common magnets but cheaper to produce, they’ve become an almost exclusive Chinese export since the country concentrates the biggest global reserves of rare earths, a group of 17 minerals that includes neodymium. But Brazil has just taken an important step toward nationalizing supermagnet production and perhaps turning into a global heavyweight.

The Institute of Technological Research (IPT) in São Paulo has produced in a lab the first 100 grams of a crucial metallic alloy for supermagnet manufacturing. A compound of neodymium and another lanthanide metal, praseodymium, the alloy is known as metallic didymium. The innovation stems from a partnership with Companhia Brasileira de Metalurgia e Mineração (CBMM), which realized it was wasting a business opportunity.

CBMM is the world leader in niobium exports, one of the most corrosion and extreme-temperature resistant materials, extracted from a mine in Araxá, Minas Gerais. But the company ends up with a significant amount of rare-earths when extracting niobium and still has not found commercial applications. “If all residues from niobium exploration were turned into didymium, Brazil could supply the international market,” says João Batista Ferreira Neto, a researcher at the IPT’s Technological Center in Metallurgy and Materials and the didymium project’s coordinator.

Brazil holds the second largest rare-earth reserves in the world, of around 22 million tonnes, but still does not have production on a commercial scale. China, on the other hand, holds 55 million tonnes and supplies 90% of the market. It holds the power to dictate prices.

Valued at $5 billion, the rare-earth industry has strategic importance because its materials are used in high value-added products like cellphones, notebooks and electric engines. The Chinese entered the market in the 1970s, starting by producing oxides, alloys and then machines from the ore. Prices were so low that soon European countries and the US left the market. But now the Chinese high-tech industry has developed enough and domestic consumption increased. In parallel, the Chinese government has adopted stricter environmental rules and small companies ended up shutting down.

If it weren’t enough, China created export barriers and quotas that made prices skyrocket between 2009 and 2011 and raised concern in many nations. The World Trade Organization (WTO) considered the Chinese tariff and quota policy inadequate and ordered their removal.

“The idea is to have the country dominate technologically the entire supermagnet production chain, from rare-earth extraction to magnet manufacturing,” the IPT researcher says. The missing link to commence production was turning didymium oxide into metal, which has just been achieved. The alloy was obtained from the development of reactors and reduction process led by eight IPT researchers.

“Today we have technical viability. The commercial one will depend on scale gains and commercial agreements,” Mr. Ferreira Neto says. Japan, Europe and the US could resort to partnerships with Brazil, he says. CBMM is already talking with domestic companies for potential deals. The wind-power sector, for instance, has a growing demand for supermagnets. “Competing with China is difficult, but a potential deal with other countries can happen and you have to be technologically prepared to offer the market your product,” the research’s coordinator says.

“CBMM is a metallurgical and mining company and will not make the magnet. Because of that it is seeking help from other companies,” he says. The priority now is to develop technology and knowledge about the alloy.

With a two-year timeframe and slated to end in June, the research is still evolving to the stages of testing processes, improving operating parameters (like increasing energy savings) and controlling didymium purity grades – already higher than 99%, since the purer the better.

The research cost R$9.5 million, with a third financed by the Brazilian Association of Industrial Research and Innovation (Embrapii) from funds of the Studies and Projects Financier of the Science and Technology Ministry (Finep/MCTI) transferred to the National Confederation of Industry (CNI). The rest was shared by the IPT and CBMM.

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