Recycler Turns to Old Wind Turbines for Rare Earths
Recycling firm Paladin EnviroTech sees opportunity in America’s old wind turbines (The Wall Street Journal, subscription).
What’s going on: The U.S. is working to reduce its reliance on China for rare earths, which are critical to manufacturing everything from drones to MRI scanners. Paladin is betting that one potential source of new supply is the junkyard.
- The Tampa, Florida–based company is targeting retired wind turbines, whose enormous generators can contain large rare earth magnets.
- Some newer turbine models can hold up to a ton of rare earths, worth nearly $100,000.
- Thousands of wind turbines across the U.S. are ready for retirement as the wind-energy sector ages.
The big picture: In a move “that laid bare Western manufacturers’ dependency on China,” Beijing, which controls most of the global rare earth supply, tightened export restrictions on the materials last year.
No easy feat: Getting rare earths out of the old turbines is difficult work.
- “Cranes have to remove the blades and the nacelles—the room-size housings that contain the turbine generators. Then the components are sliced up with hydraulic shears and other equipment and loaded onto heavy-duty trucks.”
- Meanwhile, the wind “can play havoc with blades being moved by cranes.”
Looking ahead: Paladin expects to secure enough retired turbines to run an efficient operation and forecasts that next year, wind-turbine magnets will make up about 40% of its total tonnage.
- The firm currently has a pipeline of about 500 turbines nationwide.
