The International Electronics Manufacturing Initiative (iNEMI) is experimenting with reusing components from hard drives retired from data centers.
The experiment is part of a proof-of-concept response to a global initiative to understand how realistically material from hard disk drives (HDDs) can be reused. Preliminary results show that the magnets in the HDDs can be reused successfully, but certain concerns linger. iNEMI is based out of Morrisville, North Carolina and its membership includes people from the top OEMs, ODMs and EMS providers from electronics manufacturers. They've been working with government labs, various university-based research institutions and other organizations for years on a variety of topics. To better understand issues with sustainability in electronics manufacturing and how much electronic waste is produced, iNEMI teamed up with the Critical Materials Institute which was created by the U.S. Department of Energy after a 2010-2011 crisis in the supply chain of rare earth metals became known.
Rare Earth Material Supply Shock
The events that sparked concern occurred in September of 2010, when a collision between a Japanese and Chinese supply ship occurred in Japanese waters.
This attracted the U.S. Department of Energy's concern due to the fact that rare earth metals neodymium and dysprosium were used to make magnets that both helped generate torque in electric and hybrid car motors and converted torque into electricity in wind turbines. Though the overall effect of this supply shock was a temporary increase in prices for rare earth metals, it sparked an interest in finding alternate ways to accumulate rare earth materials and the Critical Materials Institute was created.
Extracting rare-earth elements from used electronics is a way to prevent a supply shock from damaging US green energy efforts, both in wind turbine and electric vehicle production. HDDs were chosen for electronics recycling efforts by iNEMI and CMI because they are mass-produced and have a high turnover rate, especially in data centers.
Huge Quantities of HDDs Used By Microsoft and Google
Tech behemoths like Google and Microsoft replace huge amounts of HDDs in their data centers every 24 to 36 months on average. Once the HDD's are used, they are generally shredded and sold for scrap steel and aluminum, even though they could easily be wiped and repurposed. Waste slag from metal recovery facilities in Tennessee includes rare earth materials like platinum and gold, which end up being mixed in as filler material for paving roads. That's right, some roads are paved with gold and platinum in the US.
Administrators for a tool called the Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool (EPEAT) recently began allocating points for HDDs that have 5 percent reusable materials. EPEAT is a program created to objectively verify electronics manufactured using sustainable methodology and materials.
If you're an IT company looking to score a lucrative government contract, you must win EPEAT Gold ratings to even have a chance at closing a deal. However, if you're a manufacturer and you want to buy reusable rare earth materials to build HDDs that meet EPEAT Gold rating standard, there isn't really a concrete way to go about it.
Urban Mining Company and Momentum Technologies are involved in two of the projects in iNEMI's initiative that are actively looking for ways to retrieve magnet scraps from shredded drives. Researchers from Momentum Technologies are learning to take the magnet scraps and pulverize them into oxide powder, which is the material used to create the magnets in the first place. In sequence, the Urban Mining Company can process the oxide power into new magnets. There are ways to remove the magnets whole as well.
Google received six HDDs with reused whole magnet assemblies, which were removed by hand in a clean room at Telepan, a Dutch electronics company. After their removal, Seagate took them and placed them into new drives. According to Google, the drives are functional.
At Oak Ridge National Laboratory, an automated process for large-scale disassembly of hard drives and magnet removal is underway. After analysis of 10,000 drives and 250 different models, patterns emerge that help build the automated process and give it the highest chance of success. For instance, at Oak Ridge, researchers examined 10,000 drives of 250 different models and found that magnets are located in the lower left corner with only two exceptions. The research team responsible for this also created a database of fastener positions. After programming them into a machine, the machine scans a HDD's barcode, removes fasteners and slices out the corner containing the magnet components. The corners are grouped together in an oven and heated, and the magnets drop out during the demagnetization process. This research has spawned a pilot program at Oak Ridge that processes 7,200 HDD's every 24 hours.
Deriving the most value from the magnets is pretty straightforward: reuse them in HDDs. If HDDs become obsolete, then they can be reused for electric motors or oxidized into powder to make new magnet blocks.
Bottom Line
Overall HDD reuse is a good thing from the perspective of concern about sustainability and electronic waste, but it is also better for the bottom line of scrap commodities brokers. HDD reuse gives companies pause due to concerns about the state of data encoded in old disk drives. Re-sellers of IT equipment make more money from removing the magnetic assembly and from reusing HDD's than shredding them and selling the slag for reuse in other materials like pavement.
More information about the results of the five projects to reuse HDD's from iNEMI's initiative and collaboration with researchers from the U.S. Departments Critical Materials Institute will be forthcoming, and one of the major concerns to address moving forward is how to better assure large organizations to trust electronics sanitation so they don't automatically shred their drives and create waste.