{"id":49077,"date":"2024-07-10T08:42:56","date_gmt":"2024-07-10T07:42:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.innovationnewsnetwork.com\/?p=49077"},"modified":"2024-08-12T14:44:36","modified_gmt":"2024-08-12T13:44:36","slug":"imagine-a-magnet-industry-without-limitations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.innovationnewsnetwork.com\/imagine-a-magnet-industry-without-limitations\/49077\/","title":{"rendered":"Imagine a magnet industry without limitations"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Advanced Magnet Lab is enabling here-to-fore unachievable magnet configurations which unlock the magnet supply chain outside of China and free the world from critical rare earth elements.<\/h2>\n

Magnets are at the heart of products like motors and generators, which are in turn used in virtually every sector of society \u2013 energy, manufacturing, medical, consumer products, and transportation and are a critical component in defence weapons and vehicles (land, air and sea). Today, the magnet industry is dominated by China, which has an abundance of magnet rare earth elements (REE) materials, esoteric manufacturing knowledge, low-cost labour, and low environmental standards. Breaking such a \u2018high barrier to market entry\u2019 necessitates new thinking and a new and more innovative approach, which can replace the current Chinese approach to their control of the magnet market.<\/p>\n

A 2022 report from the U.S. Department of Energy reports that China dominates all of the major stages in the supply chain.<\/p>\n

This includes rare earth mining, separation and processing of individual rare earth oxides, metal refining and 92% share of annual global magnet production, the stage with the highest added value.<\/p>\n

The Advanced Magnet Lab, Inc<\/a>. (AML), located in Melbourne, Florida, is working to onshore critical magnet production and break China\u2019s stranglehold over this critical capability. AML\u2019s breakthrough innovations are unique in that they dramatically improve the Chinese technologies that commercial and defence industries currently rely on by enabling magnets with non-critical REE, more efficient manufacturing, and superior performance in an environmentally cleaner and sustainable way with less energy consumption.<\/p>\n

Legacy to state-of-the-art<\/h3>\n

Establishing a domestic supply chain resilience requires a new approach that addresses the entire magnet supply chain: Materials, magnets, magnet manufacturing, magnet configurations, and magnet-based products. Moving from legacy to state-of-the-art, from incremental to transformational, requires a radically new and all-inclusive technology platform. A technology that rethinks how magnets should be designed, manufactured and applied. An approach that is not limited to \u2018block\u2019 magnets. An approach that \u2018thinks out of the box\/block\u2019 applies an efficient design and manufacturing process to achieve the optimum performance and cost for a specific magnet-based product.<\/p>\n

The legacy (conventional) approach evolves incremental improvements in magnet material compositions to increase magnet performance, such as raising the operational temperature. This requires complex manufacturing processes and critical REE to improve the operational performance of a magnet in demanding applications such as electrical machines (motors and generators). This incremental approach is the wrong approach. What if it were possible to reduce or eliminate critical REE with revolutionary magnets<\/a> from a single new technology platform?<\/p>\n

The legacy approach<\/h3>\n

The conventional legacy approach to magnet manufacturing is archaic. There has been virtually no improvement in manufacturing. Magnets are first produced in blocks, then cut into small piece-part magnets. They are limited in shape, size, and single-direction magnetisation. For motors, the largest magnet market, designs require dozens, hundreds, and sometimes thousands of magnets in the motor\u2019s rotor assembly. Having strong magnetic fields, the assembly of the magnets to optimise the motor\u2019s performance is complex, dangerous, and costly.<\/p>\n

A new approach<\/h3>\n

A new approach opens up new design space freedom for engineers, resulting in unforeseen magnet solutions. Gone are magnet blocks, replaced with magnet configurations, which replace the antiquated legacy approach with state-of-the-art magnets, enabling improved performance and lower-cost magnet-based products. State-of-the-art opens up new choices for magnet material compositions. Compositions which are leaner or free of REE. What if it was possible to have an all-inclusive approach in a single technology platform which disrupts the magnet supply chain to break China\u2019s dominance of the magnet REE industry? AML has done this with the PM- Wire\u2122 Technology Platform.<\/p>\n

\"p-m
Fig. 1: Left: PM-Wire\u2122 – Single-Piece Non-Sintered Halbach Array. Right: 3D Field Map Validating the Sinusoidal Magnetic Field Distribution<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

What is state-of-the-art?<\/h3>\n

AML has developed PM-Wire<\/a>, a novel approach for the design and manufacture of magnets which improves performance and lowers the cost of magnet-based products while addressing the global desire to reduce dependency on China and REE. PM-Wire is an ideal approach for manufacturing magnets. It uses a \u2018wire-like\u2019 manufacturing process for creating unrealised shapes where all the critical process parameters for the magnet materials can be adjusted and precisely maintained\/controlled.<\/p>\n

What is the PM-Wire impact?<\/h3>\n

PM-Wire \u2018checks all the boxes.\u2019 It impacts all aspects of the magnet supply chain, from raw materials to the final end-use product, such as an electrical vehicle motor. While the value proposition varies by application, the overarching benefits are impressive and impactful.<\/p>\n

Materials<\/strong><\/p>\n

PM-Wire is a \u2018materials enabler\u2019 that improves the end-use product performance of existing sintered alloy compositions. It also enables non-sintered alloys with less complexity and lower manufacturing costs than sintered magnets, non-critical REE magnets, and the \u2018holy grail\u2019 of all magnets \u2013 100% REE-Free.<\/p>\n

Configurations<\/strong><\/p>\n

PM-Wire enables long lengths and unique shapes such as rings and helixes. The manufacturing process and proprietary magnetisation of the shaped magnets provide precise and continuous control of magnetic field orientation. One product configuration is PM-360\u2122. In this PM-Wire configuration, AML\u2019s proprietary process yields an almost perfect sinusoidal, continuously changing magnetisation along the full length of a straight, ring or helical magnet. This here-to-fore unachievable type of magnet is a motor designer\u2019s dream design solution. In the example below, 2,750 conventional magnets are replaced by eight PM-360 helixes.<\/p>\n

Manufacturing<\/strong><\/p>\n

PM-Wire\u2019s magnet manufacturing process provides high-rate, high-yield, high-quality, less labour and vastly lower-cost capital equipment compared to conventional block magnets.\u00a0 AML\u2019s first manufacturing line can produce PM-Wire magnets at a rate of between 4-6m a minute. To put that into perspective, a magnet having a dimensional cross-section of 4 cm x 4 cm would require less than six production lines to produce 20,000 mt\/annum of magnets. Such volume would consume the entire production capacity of the US Mountain Pass rare earth mine, one of the world\u2019s largest REE deposits.\u00a0 Manufacturing lines are low-cost, automated, flexible, easy to scale and can be strategically co-located for supply chain partners or end-user customers.<\/p>\n

Enabling non-sintered magnets<\/h3>\n

Non-sintered magnets, commonly known as bonded magnets, require a bonding agent to bond the magnet powder into a \u2018monolithic\u2019 block magnet. This limits the magnet performance due to a percentage of the magnet volume occupied by a bonding agent. This significantly reduces the density, which has a direct impact on magnet performance. Magnet reliability and longevity of bonded magnets are reliant on the magnet material and coatings for structural integrity and corrosion resistance. Furthermore, like sintered magnets, they are limited in shape, size, and single-direction magnetisation.<\/p>\n

PM-Wire enables non-sintered magnets for higher performance and higher value applications, which are unachievable with bonded magnets. Three inherent PM-Wire manufacturing attributes contribute to enabling non-sintered magnets.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Maximum powder density by replacing the bonding agent with a metal containment jacket.<\/li>\n
  2. Magnet powder performance by compressing to a specific powder\u2019s optimum density.<\/li>\n
  3. Magnet magnetisation using proprietary methods enables single-piece Halbach arrays (sinusoidal continuously changing magnetisation), which replace conventional north-south pole topology.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    \"magnet<\/p>\n

    Additionally, PM-wire magnets are virtually unbreakable and corrosion-proof. As a result, PM-wire non-sintered magnets can compete in performance and cost with sintered magnets in the end-use application, even for the most demanding high-performance motors, such as those used in electric vehicles and aero propulsion.<\/p>\n

    PM-Wire enables non-sintered magnet alloys, including neodymium iron boron (NdFeB), samarium iron nitride (SmFeN), iron nitride (FeN), and manganese bismuth (MnBi).<\/p>\n

    State-of-the-art at a fraction of the cost<\/h3>\n

    How does the cost of PM-Wire compare to the legacy approach? There is no comparison! One extraordinary example is a PM-Wire electric vehicle retrofit solution. In collaboration with the U.S. Oak Ridge National Laboratory, one of the world\u2019s premier research institutions, ~2,750 NdFeB thin and brittle sintered (NdFeB) magnets arranged as Halbach arrays are replaced with eight non-sintered PM-360 single-piece helical magnets.<\/p>\n

    The solution provides:
    \n\u2022\u00a0\u00a0 Equivalent performance (torque and efficiency)
    \n\u2022\u00a0\u00a0 Eliminates the need to actively cool the motor rotor
    \n\u2022\u00a0\u00a0 Significantly reduced part count that simplifies rotor assembly
    \n\u2022\u00a0\u00a0 Yields a fraction of the cost compared to sintered complex Halbach array design<\/p>\n

    PM-Wire market adoption<\/h3>\n

    How is a legacy market responding to such a radical change from legacy to state-of-the-art, from Block to PM-Wire? The response from the commercial and defence industry is a \u2018technology pull.\u2019 Engineers quickly get an impression of the potential design solutions using PM-Wire in the electrical machine market.<\/p>\n