Paladin harvests rare-earth metals from retired wind turbines

New turbine blades raise power output as old generators enter recycling

At MidAmerican Energy’s Highland wind farm in O’Brien County, Iowa, retired wind turbines are being dismantled as the utility replaces them with newer, more powerful models. The Wall Street Journal reported that Paladin EnviroTech is harvesting components from the retired machines, including rare-earth metals that the company says can help reduce U.S. reliance on China. Rare earths go into everything from drones to MRI scanners, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Thousands of retirement-age turbines are waiting to be harvested as the U.S. wind industry ages. Rare-earth magnets were uncommon in some earlier machines but became commonplace in more powerful models, and those models are now starting to be replaced. At Highland, 20% of the turbines being replaced contain rare earths, though the report said this waste stream is gradually becoming more valuable.

Brian Diesselhorst, chief executive of Paladin, is in the market for various expired gadgets, but retired turbines are his No. 1 target because the room-size generators in some models contain large rare-earth magnets. Some more recent models can contain nearly a ton of rare earths, worth close to $100,000, Paladin estimates. Dysprosium and neodymium are among the metals used in magnets for electric motors.

“That’s why it was critical for us to get into the game now,” Diesselhorst said. He said he believes Paladin is the first company to begin harvesting rare earths from this source.

According to Adam Jablonski, vice president of project development at MidAmerican, the Highland turbines have been spinning for a decade and could serve another decade. MidAmerican is replacing them with models that have blades 20% longer, allowing each turbine to supply about 15% more power. Jablonski said the increase matters as electricity demand rises and developing new energy projects is slow and expensive.

MidAmerican, the Berkshire Hathaway-owned utility that owns the site, has turned the Midwest’s abundant wind and space into the largest wind-power business of any U.S. utility, according to The Wall Street Journal. The company has already replaced nearly 1,500 of its 3,700 turbines. Before Paladin arrived, recyclers harvested what they could from the equipment, while rare-earth metals in some machines were going to waste.

The Wall Street Journal said China established its rare-earth dominance over decades by providing financial support for domestic companies and flooding the market to squash nascent competitors. Last year, with the trade war with the U.S. heating up, Beijing imposed export restrictions that laid bare Western manufacturers’ dependency on China. Recycling ventures are one part of an effort to reduce that dependence.

The Trump administration is providing billions of dollars for mineral ventures, though those investments will take years to pay off. Paladin is among a few ventures betting that the quickest route to new supply runs through retired equipment and the recycling yard.

Dismantling turbines is a barrier to entry. Cranes remove the blades and nacelles—the room-size housings that contain turbine generators—then components are cut with hydraulic shears and other equipment and loaded onto heavy-duty trucks.

Luke Wray, the Paladin executive charged with overseeing the company’s supplies of rare earths and other critical minerals, described the physical risks. “You’re dealing with 80-to-120,000-pound pieces that you’ve got to load on flatbeds,” he said. “You’re on a field in the middle of nowhere. If you’ve got mud, or you’re on clay, and the groundsoil isn’t sturdy, you could have a crane tip over.”

In one job, contractors used explosives to fell turbines; hubs weighing more than 30 tons ended up buried deep in clay and had to be excavated. Strong gusts can also play havoc with blades moved by cranes.

The other obstacle is separating the materials cost-effectively so rare earths can be isolated, ground up and turned into metal for new magnets. Paladin works with Critical Materials Recycling, a Boone, Iowa company commercializing a leaching process developed at Ames National Laboratory to extract nearly all the rare earths from electronic waste.

Recyclers have primarily targeted copper. Turbines contain several tons of copper in their wiring and other components, and the report said a ton was worth roughly $14,500 at current prices. Rare earths are harder to separate and less valuable, so they are generally recycled alongside steel and irretrievably lost in a byproduct called slag.

Several U.S. battery-recycling ventures ran into trouble in recent years, in part because they could not source enough feedstock and bring costs down, The Wall Street Journal reported. Paladin is counting on securing enough retired turbines to run its recycling operation efficiently.

Wray said Paladin has lined up a pipeline of about 500 turbines across the United States. For next year, Paladin forecasts that wind-turbine magnets will account for roughly 40% of its tonnage, with MRI machines and EV motors contributing about 25% each and hard drives accounting for the last 10%. In the company’s Tampa, Fla., offices, a poster of Don Quixote, the fictional knight who tilted at windmills, hangs on the wall, with a smaller portrait of Wray in the corner.