10,000-ton rare earth magnets production targeted by US firm, operations to be powered by hydrogen

A Florida-based company has signed a letter of intent with Evolution Metals & Technologies Corp to deploy behind-the-meter hydrogen power supporting EM&T’s rare earth magnet and critical materials operations.

The agreement puts VIVIFY’s hydrogen platforms to work for one of the most strategically important supply chains in the country, and it does so without waiting on the legacy grid.

Rare earth permanent magnets drive electric vehicles

Rare earth permanent magnets drive electric vehicles, medical imaging equipment, and defense systems. Miami-headquartered EM&T is building a non-China supply chain for them, scaling magnet production capacity to approximately 10,000 tons annually and developing a fully integrated U.S. industrial campus. That work runs on power, and large blocks of reliable power have become one of the hardest inputs for advanced manufacturers to secure, according to details available.

“Every serious manufacturer in this country is asking the same question right now: where does the power come from? EM&T is rebuilding one of the most important supply chains America has,” said Jason Herring, founder and CEO of VIVIFY Technology.

“Our job is to make sure power is never the thing that slows them down. The engineering is done. Now it goes to work.”

VIVIFY revealed that its VIVIFY’s containerized hydrogen power unit, delivers up to 1MW per container and scales by adding modules. Water is the primary fuel input, output is 99% emission-free, and no ongoing fuel resupply is required. Rather than waiting on a single large installation or a utility interconnection timeline, capacity is added container by container as each phase of production comes online. The Flying Pig joins the flagship Hydrogen Oxygen Generator (HOG) and the Clean Air Technology (CAT) five-stage emissions control system in the VIVIFY Arsenal.

The agreement marks VIVIFY’s first announced commitment with a publicly traded company and a direct application of its platforms to American manufacturing and national defense supply chains.

Rare earth refining and magnet manufacturing are industrial processes that require substantial infrastructure and dependable energy supplies.

For a company attempting to establish a domestic supply chain, electricity availability can therefore become an important consideration alongside access to raw materials, processing technology, manufacturing equipment and logistics.

Evolution Metals’ LOI with VIVIFY is designed to explore whether hydrogen-based generation can provide some of that required energy infrastructure without depending exclusively on traditional grid expansion.

The proposed approach could also allow the companies to evaluate grid-independent or grid-complementary configurations depending on the eventual site requirements and regulatory conditions.

VIVIFY’s hydrogen technology could potentially provide a modular component of that infrastructure strategy. For VIVIFY, the proposed collaboration would place its hydrogen-energy technology in the context of a planned industrial-scale critical-materials operation.

Whether the partnership ultimately moves from a non-binding LOI to commercial deployment will depend on technical, regulatory and economic considerations that have yet to be resolved.

Source: https://interestingengineering.com/innovation/rare-earth-magnet-operations-hydrogen-platforms