Hela Novel Metals LLC — Department of Defense SBIR Phase I: DLA212-004

Description

HELA Novel Metals LLC is a U.S. Corporation with no Chinese investments or technology affiliations. The company has developed an efficient and cost-effective technology for converting individual Rare Earth (RE) salts to pure metal powders. This game-changing technology was developed after 3 years of combined basic research and multiple advanced pilot testing programs at our company facility in Massachusetts. The technology has been successfully applied to convert mixed metal oxalates to metal alloy powders such as LaNi, NdFeB, SmCo, DyFe, GdBCO and electrode powders ( LaNdPrCeY-CoNiFe.) for Electric Vehicle batteries. The process consists of three (3) major steps, namely ; a.) conversion of primary oxides or carbonates to oxalates in regular reactors , b.) carboxylate reduction in controlled atmosphere using customized reactors, and c.) refining of the metal powders using a proprietary reductant at elevated temperature and pressure. The process eliminates the need to produce metal ingots and makes it possible to produce magnetic powders ( 1-10 um) directly from mixed metal oxalates such as NdFeB, SmCo and AlNiCo. The HELA's Carboxylate Reduction Process (CRP) is by far superior to most conventional technologies because it is less energy- and reagent-intensive. The CRP Technology produces micro-powders with excellent compaction and sintering properties making it possible to manufacture sintered or bonded magnets rapidly. The CRP process can be scaled up speedily to produce up to 100,000 TPY NdFeB /SmCo/AlNiCo magnets cost-effectively using modular reactors. The cost of producing NdFeB powder per KG is 4-5 times smaller compared to conventional processes because the need to produce metal ingots and cast strips are eliminated. By comparison, molten salt electrolysis (MSE) requires a molten salt ( Fluorides or Chlorides) in the electrochemical cell to reduce only light rare earth salts (La, Ce, Nd, Pr) to metals. MSE technology cannot be applied to heavy rare earth metal salts. Presently there is no technology that is robust enough to produce all rare earth metals or magnetic alloys (NdFeB, SmCo and AlNiCo) in a single circuit. HELA Novel Metals is seeking investment to expand the production of metal powders (NdFeB and SmCo ) from 50 kg/month to 40 TPM by 2022. The company has demonstrated the capability to produce 2 kg/day of RE metal alloys but plans to ramp up production of magnetic powders (NdFeB, NdPrFeB, SmCo, GdBCO) from 40 TPM to 500 TPM by 2024 which will create huge business opportunities to manufacture permanent magnets in the United States under Phases II and III of our Proposal. Under Phase I, this proposal seeks $100,000-200,000 from DLA to start a process for qualifying our flowsheet and products with industrial partners and to set up quality control systems in-house. Currently, most commercial laboratories are not set up to analyze air-sensitive rare earth metals , magnetic alloys and block magnets.