Public procurement notice: Contract Notice
Published: 2020-06-26
Buyer: University of Birmingham
Country: UK
Contract type: Supplies
Procedure: Open procedure
CPV classification: 44615000
Estimated value: 404761.9 GBP
Submission deadline: 2020-07-24
Award criteria: The most economic tender
EU fund: Horizon Europe

Technical requirements: This project is funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme ‘SUSMAGPRO’ (Sustainable Recovery, Reprocessing and Reuse of Rare-Earth Magnets in a Circular Economy) under grant agreement 821114.
The University of Birmingham invites tenders for supply of a bespoke hydrogen processing of magnet scrap (HPMS) vessel. The HPMS vessel will be one of two large-scale magnet recycling pilot plants developed across Europe as part of the SUSMAGPRO project and will focus on processing new forms of magnetic scrap, including; loudspeakers, electric motors, power steering units and wind turbine canisters.
This project is funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme ‘SUSMAGPRO’ (Sustainable Recovery, Reprocessing and Reuse of Rare-Earth Magnets in a Circular Economy) under grant agreement 821114.
The University of Birmingham invites tenders for supply of a bespoke hydrogen processing of magnet scrap (HPMS) vessel. The HPMS vessel will be one of two large-scale magnet recycling pilot plants developed across Europe as part of the SUSMAGPRO project and will focus on processing new forms of magnetic scrap, including; loudspeakers, electric motors, power steering units and wind turbine canisters.
The HPMS vessel is based on a patented technology, developed at the University of Birmingham, in which hydrogen is used to extract Nd-Fe-B magnet powder from end of life permanent magnet containing products. During the HPMS process, sintered Nd Fe B magnets are crushed and loaded inside a vessel, which is then sealed, evacuated, back filled with an inert gas (e.g. Argon or Nitrogen), evacuated and then filled with approximately 1.2 bar hydrogen at room temperature. Once exposed to hydrogen, the sintered Nd-Fe-B undergoes the hydrogen decrepitation (HD) process and breaks down into a friable, demagnetised, hydrogenated powder.
Often the end of life products containing the Nd Fe-B material is encased within some sort of housing so the hydrogenated powder needs to be liberated from the scrap using some form of mechanical agitation. This is typically performed by rotating the scrap within a porous drum (3 mm pore size) within the HPMS vessel, after which the powder falls into a sealable collection pot at the bottom of the vessel, which can then be unloaded inside an argon or nitrogen containing glove box (O2 = < 5 ppm).
Once inside a glove box, the hydrogenated powder can then be purified using a combination of milling and sieving to remove any nickel coating and other impurities before being reprocessed in a number of different ways to form secondary magnets.
The HPMS process has already been demonstrated at the 5 kg scale using a 300 L vessel at the University of Birmingham. The main objective of the new HPMS vessel will be to scale this technology to a 50 kg batch size.
This project is funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme ‘SUSMAGPRO’ (Sustainable Recovery, Reprocessing and Reuse of Rare-Earth Magnets in a Circular Economy) under grant agreement 821114.


Award value: 404761.9