LG Electronics has developed a technology to recover and recycle rare earth permanent magnets from waste home appliance parts and will launch a pilot project in cooperation with the government.

LG Electronics announced on the 27th that it had signed a business agreement for a “Pilot Project for Recovery of Waste Permanent Magnets from Waste Home Appliance Refrigerant Compressors” with the Ministry of Climate, Energy and Environment and E-Circulation Governance at the Metropolitan Resource Circulation Center in Yongin, Gyeonggi Province.

The project focuses on recovering and recycling rare earth permanent magnets contained inside compressors when disposing of them, as compressors are core components of home appliances. Rare earths are minerals widely used in electric vehicles, industrial motors and home appliances, and securing their supply chain has recently emerged as a key issue for industry.

Until now, permanent magnets inside compressors have been difficult to separate due to their strong magnetic force, so only some metals such as copper were selectively recovered and the rest was recycled as scrap metal. LG Electronics addressed this issue by applying a demagnetization process that removes magnetic force using a magnetic field. Compared with conventional high-heat separation methods, this process consumes less energy and prevents property changes caused by heat, thereby increasing recovery efficiency and recycling value.

In addition, the company uses vision AI-based image analysis technology to recognize the shape of waste compressors and identify the location of rare earth permanent magnets in order to apply the optimal separation process.

Through this pilot project, LG Electronics expects to recover approximately 1.6 tons of rare earth permanent magnets annually from around 40,000 units of waste home appliances. The recovered permanent magnets are expected to be used in future for the development of technologies to convert them into raw materials for new magnet production.

Yang Hee-goo, Head of the Production Innovation Center at LG Electronics’ Manufacturing Technology Institute, said, “By continuously strengthening our technological capabilities in the field of resource circulation, we will contribute to realizing a circular economy in which key materials are recovered from end-of-life products and reused, while also taking the lead in establishing a stable foundation for the circular use of future critical minerals.”

Meanwhile, although rare earths are not scarce in terms of reserves, they have a weakness in that mining and refining cause significant environmental pollution, and production is concentrated in certain countries, making supply unstable. The so-called “urban mining” technology that extracts rare earths from waste home appliances and waste electronic products is regarded as a practical alternative that can reduce dependence on overseas sources.

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