Rare Earth Salts plans to produce terbium oxide from recycled fluorescent light bulbs.
The U.S. Department of Defense announced Monday that it will award Rare Earth Salts $4.22 million to develop and expand the production of terbium oxide from recycled fluorescent light bulbs. The funding is made via the Defense Production Act Investment (DPAI) office, which has recently administered multiple awards to North American companies focusing on supply chains, such as a cobalt producer in Canada (we reported). By ramping up the domestic production of critical raw materials, these investments align with one of the National Defense Industrial Strategy’s four priorities: bolstering supply chain resilience. Terbium’s primary use today is as an additive to rare earth permanent magnets to make them more heat-resistant and increase stability. It is a crucial ingredient of high-tech applications, as these magnets are in a swath of technologies such as electric vehicles or wind turbines. As a so-called heavy rare earth, terbium is one of the scarcest rare earth elements. Currently, China dominates the global production of heavy rare earths with feedstock from neighboring Myanmar.
Discarded Fluorescent Light Bulbs – A Forgotten Source of Rare Earths?
Fluorescent lightbulbs are coated with a phosphor-based coating containing terbium and other rare earth elements on the inside. In recent decades, many fluorescent light bulbs have been discarded in favor of light-emitting diodes (LEDs). Recovering these critical raw materials from waste streams could thus become a relevant new source of supply, as multiple studies allege. Securing alternative sources of supply could help reduce import dependencies from China.
Rare Earth has developed commercial processes to produce other rare earth elements as well, according to the company. However, the company did not clarify the capacity of how many light bulbs it plans to recycle or how much terbium it estimates to produce.
More on the recovery of rare earths from discarded light bulbs: A team from ETH Zurich has a similar approach: it intends to focus on the recovery of the fellow rare earth element europium from fluorescent light bulbs.
Photo: iStock/Dirk von Mallinckrodt
