Honda recycling rare materials for new hybrid engines

In a bid to present new innovative technologies and green cars, the global automobile giants are sweating over tedious research and development. The modern automotive industry does not want only quality stylish cars to praise an auto manufacturer, but it requires a lot of innovation and serious striving towards a better and greener commuting system that can earn a car maker global success. Like its peers round the world, Honda is also on a mission to come up with latest technology in order to make the most promising green cars a success, that is the Fuel Cell Vehicle.

Honda has achieved a great deal of success when its rare earth metal recycling program is concerned, as in few months’ time the program has emerged from a curious research to a real corporate possibility. Honda is now going further and has announced that the company will use the retrieved rare earth materials in its upcoming hybrid engines. In March the Japanese car major had announced its contemplation on salvaging the precious materials from the old nickel-metal-hydride batteries to be recycled.

Honda started the retrieving process that was developed in collaboration with Japan Minerals & Chemicals Co. Ltd. The process is capable of extracting about 80 percent of the rare earth metals in a used nickel-metal-hydride battery, and the retrieved metal’s purity is 99 percent. Initially prior to the extraction, Honda has been melting down the batteries. Very Soon the Japanese car maker began extracting the materials on a commercial scale, recycling the extracted metals in new batteries and in a wide range of its products.

At present Honda contemplates to use the recycled rare materials in magnetic motors that would power the company’s future hybrid vehicles along with the help of JMC and TDK Corporation. The recycling process has already begun with these companies just waiting for a large amount of stable supply of used batteries. The sole source of the used batteries for Honda is presently a voluntary battery donation program. The company is looking forward to get a more steady supply through an increased donations and arrangement with the salvage yards. With the supply of steady volume of used batteries, JMC estimates a maximum capacity to produce around 400 tons of rare materials annually.

However, Honda is not the only auto maker that’s conscious of its usage and conservation of rare earth materials. Since the end of 2012, Nissan is implementing new magnets that decreased the usage of heat-resistant rare earth dysprosium by 40 percent, while General Motors showed that its Chevy Volt cells could be cycled to provide households with off-grid power back-up.

According to studies, the demand for the rare materials would increase around 2600 percent over the coming 25 years. Moreover, China is presently controlling 97 percent of the rear earth materials market. Given these factors, the auto makers will require to come up with more innovative technologies in order to keep the development costs down to keep on offering affordable Electric Vehicles, or else the consumers might shun the EVs.