SSD units may have become the norm in our PCs and laptops, but traditional hard drives continue to have a huge specific weight. This type of storage supports have an additional advantage of which some companies want to take advantage of: they contain Rare earth.
Recycling against Chinese restrictions. Last week Western Digital advertisement which has created an important hard -record recycling program. He has done it in collaboration with Microsoft and with specialized companies such as CMR (material critical rcycling) and Pedalpoint Recycling.
Picaresque economy for the US. The recycling process will take place in factories located in the United States, and those materials would precisely be used in other manufacturing processes also in the North American country. It’s about A singular measure that is necessary before the difficulties that USA will now have to access Those materialsand it is an example of how the country – like others – will have to go to ingenious solutions to solve the problems derived from the commercial war with China.
Hidden rare metals. The objective of this initiative is to obtain rare earth oxides containing disposses, neodymium and proseodimium. Along with these rare metals it is also possible to obtain aluminum, steel, gold, paladium and copper.
Hard discs to Gogó. This type of storage support is used massively in large data centers used for example for cloud infrastructure, and their life cycles causes units to be discarded constantly to avoid data losses. WD states that they have already recovered 21.3 tons of hard drives, SSD units and trays in which they are usually encapsulated in those data centers. According to Financial Timeshard drives in data centers have a useful life between three and five years, and it is estimated that the amount of waste globally in this area reaches 75 million tons in 2030.
Recycling seems to work. The company responsible highlight that they have managed to recycle 90% of those rare metals, and 80% for the rest of the materials that you want to recycle.
A complex but effective process. The discs come from Microsoft data centers and are sent to Pedalpoint to be ordered and processed. The magnets and steel are sent to CMR, and this company makes use of a recycling process called “dissolution without acids” (ADR) which is the one that extracts rare earths. This technology uses a copper salts solution to create a selective leaching that produces 99.5% pure rare oxides. The company avoids aggressive chemicals that could damage these rare earths or adjacent materials, such as aluminum.
And more sustainable. According to The study Of the Digital Western engineers, this recycling process produces 95% less greenhouse gases than the traditional mining of these rare and material earths.
Recycling hard drives is increasingly interesting. WD’s announcement is striking, especially considering that Microsoft is also involved in that project. However, hard drives recycling has been an area in which some startups are focusing clearly. We talked recently about Hypromag and Cyclic Materialsand in both cases the objective is the same: extract rare earths with recycled hard drives, as WD does. There is Other options underwayof course.
But. The collection of these rare earth metals through recycling processes is striking, but China has restricted the export of seven rare metalsand only one of them (Disposio) is commonly used in hard drives.
Image | Wikimedia | Barez Omer
GIPHY App Key not set. Please check settings