Substitution strategies for reducing the use of rare earths in wind turbines

By C. C. Pavel, Roberto Lacal-Arántegui, A. Marmier, D. Schüler, E. Tzimas, M. Buchert, W. Jenseit, D. Blagoeva. 2017

211 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Considering the growing rate of global wind power and overall benefits of the permanent magnet synchronous generator (PMSG) wind turbines, the future demand for high-performing NdFeB magnet and its constituent elements is likely to increase. Future deployment of wind power generation may be affected by potential disruptions in supply and price rises of critical rare earth elements. By evaluating the substitution options for the rare earths permanent magnet-based wind turbines at the material and component levels, this paper shows that substitution has a real potential to alleviate the pressure on the supply of rare earths in the wind industry. Rare earth-free turbines with good efficiency levels were already developed and could be further adopted. Alternatively, the future demand for rare earths, in particular for dysprosium, could be reduced by improving material efficiency. The future market share of rare earth-based wind turbines will most likely depend on the evolution of the price of rare earths and the techno-economic advantages of PMSG in comparison to alternative technologies that use no rare earths elements.

Subfields: Electronic, Optical and Magnetic Materials, Mechanical Engineering

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/bf6d94085e2747ee4ba86bff3c08470c8487b992

Citations in the corpus

• Sustainability and the circular economy: A theoretical approach focused on e-waste urban mining (2019, unknown): “The scarcity of natural resources may compromise some technological and sustainable products through lack of supply or the rising price of critical raw materials such as rare earth or valuable metals (Pavel et al., 2017).”