When it comes to motors, rare earth elements changed the game. However, unchecked shortages and price hikes over the last two years have left designers wondering what to do and where to go to secure supplies.
In this post, the first in a five-part Design News series on rare earth materials, we’ll examine the market forces behind the pricing instabilities, and we’ll review four approaches to mitigating the effects.
Between January 2010 and January 2012, prices for the rare earth elements (REEs) used in permanent magnets soared. (Source: Technology Metals Research LLC)
First, some background: In the 1960s, neodymium enabled the development of permanent magnets many times stronger than ferrite versions. The addition of dysprosium also allowed magnets to survive high temperatures without demagnetization. This yielded smaller, lighter motors that were available at reasonable prices and capable of surviving extended high-temperature operation.
Rare earth motors rapidly became the go-to technology for OEMs everywhere.
Then, in 2010, the price of rare earth elements began to soar, altering the cost basis for a wide range of products seemingly overnight and sending tremors throughout the industry. Prices have dropped from their August 2011 peak, when they were changing on a weekly or even daily basis, but several factors indicate that they will remain elevated from previous numbers. Let's take a closer look at the market and some design approaches that can minimize the effect of rare earth pricing on your system.
I think you've raised an excellent point, naperlou, one which applies at least by analogy to several other disconnects. The US ships plastic to be sorted before recycling/parts to be assembled/raw materials to be processed or assembled or refined or something, and then ships the product of all these back here, and then complains about human rights, health, environmental, pollution and/or labor problems, and/or supply disruptions or competition in pricing. While some or all of those complaints may be justified in a general way on the world stage, we often act as if the problems we generate as customers have nothing to do with us, because we depend on these materials or processes but don't want them here.
Yes, Naperlou, that applies to IP violations as well. One of my sources told me China's regulators are reluctant to shut down a plant that is producing knock-offs if the plant is the major employer in a small village and the plant also produces legitimate products.
While there are distinct acvantages to PM motors and generators, they are not the only kind. What about wound-field machines that have been around for >100 years? True, you have to use a little extra power to excite the field, but you gain the ability to vary the field by adjusting the field current.
My point is that even if permanent magnet materials were to diaappear entirely, we would could still be make quite satisfactory machines, especially in the larger sizes.
Short term shortages due to any number of situations, geographical, economic or political must be resolved with traditional methods. I know I'm going out on a limb here, but there are no shortages of many rare earth materials on the Moon.
Before you start rolling your eyes - consider that over the next twenty years an infrastructure for moving materials between Earth and Moon orbits may be established based on Buzz Aldrin's cycler ship concept, making shipments from the Moon downright inexpensive. The first robot miners on the Moon are little more than bulldozers scraping lunar soil off the surface and into launching facilities. Payloads are electromagnetically pushed into lunar orbit, dock with the cycler ship and delivered into Earth orbit. Payload capsules filled with lunar soil are dropped from orbit to processing plants on Earth.
Granted, the start up costs are huge, but they are an investment which could pay dividends for many decades to come. All of the needed technology to build and operate this infrastructure is readily available right now.
The popular concept is that space commercialization means communication satellites and tourism, but I think that mining the Lunar surface is the real first step and we can take those steps in the very near future.
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