Is recovering Neodymium from speaker cabinets meaningful?

Neodymium is a rare earth metal that is used in the magnets of speaker cabinets, among other things. In a pilot project by Stiching OPEN, the University of Leiden and Pforzheim University investigated to what extent these high-quality magnets with Neodymium occur in discarded speakers and whether recovering the earth metal is meaningful.

Wooden devices are currently processed separately. Various material flows are recovered and reused as raw materials. However, it is currently unclear whether the recycling process can be set up in such a way that even more and high-quality raw materials can be recovered. The specific research question is: is it attainable to sort and process speaker cabinets separately so that Neodymium is recovered and can be reused as neodymium?

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