LG Electronics is moving aggressively into recovering rare earth elements\u2014critical minerals\u2014from discarded home appliances and recycling them as industrial raw materials. The initiative expands the scope of existing resource recycling, which had been limited to extracting iron, copper, and aluminum from discarded appliances, to include rare earth permanent magnets.<\/p>\n
LG Electronics (066570.KS) announced on the 27th that it signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with South Korea’s Ministry of Climate, Energy and Environment and E-Circular Governance for a “Pilot Program to Recover Permanent Magnets from Discarded Appliance Refrigerant Compressors” at the Metropolitan Area Resource Circulation Center in Yongin, Gyeonggi Province. The signing ceremony was attended by Keum Han-seung, First Vice Minister of the Ministry of Climate, Energy and Environment; Lee Sang-jin, Chairman of E-Circular Governance; Yang Hee-gu, Head of the Production Innovation Center at LG Electronics’ Production Engineering Research Institute; and Jeong Dae-jin, Head of the Mold and Quality Research Institute.<\/p>\n
Rare earth permanent magnets are a core material that drives motors in compressors used in refrigerators and air conditioners. They are also widely used in electric vehicles and industrial motors, and their importance for stable procurement has grown amid the ongoing restructuring of global supply chains. However, their strong magnetic force makes them difficult to separate from discarded compressors. Until now, only certain metals such as copper were recovered, while the remaining components\u2014including permanent magnets\u2014were mostly processed together with scrap metal.<\/p>\n
LG Electronics solved this problem with proprietary demagnetization technology that uses magnetic fields to neutralize a magnet’s magnetic force. Previously, heat treatment methods involving high temperatures were used to separate magnets, but the new approach removes magnetic force without high-temperature processing, allowing magnets to be safely detached. The company explained that eliminating heat application reduces energy consumption and prevents changes to the magnet’s physical properties, simultaneously improving recovery efficiency and recycling value.<\/p>\n
Artificial intelligence (AI) is also being applied to the recovery process. “Vision AI” technology that recognizes visual information identifies the size and shape of discarded compressors, then precisely locates internal permanent magnets to apply the optimal separation process. This measure is designed to improve recovery efficiency by accommodating the varying compressor structures across different products.<\/p>\n
Through this pilot program, LG Electronics expects to recover approximately 1.6 tons of rare earth permanent magnets from roughly 40,000 discarded appliances annually. The recovered permanent magnets will be used in developing raw material conversion technology for producing new magnets in the future.<\/p>\n
Yang Hee-gu, Head of the Production Innovation Center, said, “We will contribute to realizing a circular economy that recovers core materials from end-of-life products and puts them back to use, and take the lead in building a foundation for the stable circular utilization of future critical minerals.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LG Electronics is moving aggressively into recovering rare earth elements\u2014critical minerals\u2014from discarded home appliances and recycling them as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":133760,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[42812,68091,68092,4667,68094,315,357,314,68095,6585,68089,23422,68093],"class_list":["post-133759","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-lg","tag-compressor","tag-demagnetization-technology","tag-e-circular-governance","tag-energy-and-environment","tag-keum-han-seung","tag-lg","tag-lg-electronics","tag-lg-group","tag-metropolitan-area-resource-circulation-center","tag-ministry-of-climate","tag-rare-earth-permanent-magnets","tag-vision-ai","tag-yang-hee-gu"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133759","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=133759"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133759\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/133760"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=133759"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=133759"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=133759"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}