Everything that is going to matter in
the 21st century relies on
rare earth permanent magnets.
Every time you click save
on your computer, clean energy that's
generated from wind turbines,
every time you turn your steering wheel.
Every time you turn up or down your air
conditioner or use the refrigerator,
magnets are that critical component which
are allowing those things to function.
Rare Earth magnets are the strongest
commercially available magnetic
material that can be produced.
On an annual basically the US consumes
something to the tune of about 25,000
tons of rare Earth magnet a year.
And in the case of magnets
in the US we expect that there's 600,00
tons of magnet supplies in our landfills.
Currently less than 1% of rare
earth elements are recycled.
A lot of people can
view that in a lot of ways.
We definitely view it as an opportunity.
(Music)
Urban Mining Company
is a magnet manufacturer.
We manufacture rare Earth permanent
magnets which are critical to the devices
and applications that we use
in the 21st century.
We're the only manufacturer of rare Earth
magnets in the United States.
We're the only manufactures globally
who use recycled material.
So rare Earth magnets are made from rare
Earth elements.
And rare Earth elements are sort of
the step children of the periodic table,
they're the Lanthanides.
They're that weird group of roles that
we never studied in high school.
The rare earth elements that are most
important to magnet manufacturer are
neodymium, praseodymium and dysprosium.
Rare earth elements are traditionally
mined in China and China alone.
But more generally speaking,
mining rare Earth materials is not a very
clean process.
Very chemical intensive,
very energy intensive and in some cases,
some really nasty byproducts.
Environmentally speaking, our process for
manufacturing magnets which is to use
recycled magnetic material,
is a massive reduction in that footprint
across all levels.
This is carbon footprint,
this is eutrophication potential,
the use of electricity and
chemicals and waste byproduct and
everything along those lines.
At Urban Mining Company we believe that
our technology has the potential,
when fully commercialized,
to reduce our need in the US for
rare Earth elements by 90% to 95%.
Generally our process is a very,
very clean dry process.
So we've totally bypassed the need to do
any kind of the traditional chemical
extraction or melting step normally
associated with these materials.
We've completely removed the use
of various chemicals or electricity or
acids etc normally required to produce
these elements for magnet manufacture.
In fact, the entirety of our process is
really closed loop and recycled.
- The process is fueled by
end of life magnets.
And we go after electric motors,
winter binds, MRI machines,
hard disk drives.
Pretty much anything that is
part of the Urban Mine
that contains an end of life magnet.
- That bulk material enters a hydrogen
reaction, followed by others,
where ultimately we're creating a very,
very, very fine powder.
That fine powder then goes into a press
where we apply an electromagnetic field to
align our particles where we end up with
With a compact.
And that kind of magnet compact
goes into a heat treatment process to
reach full density.
We're, in fact, taking this material from
these older designs and re-manufacturing
a new magnet of higher performance.
What we're creating is a closed loop
supply chain for magnets,
where the magnets that we source for
our process from old wind turbines or
electric vehicles actually go into
our manufacturing process.
And are upcycled into new products which
serve the next generation of wind
turbines or electric vehicles.
I guess, in a sense, the magnets that we
produce are critical to a cleaner future.
(Music)