8 ms·

Toyota develops first neodymium-reduced, heat-resistant magnet for motors

117 points by philipkglass 9y ago

reacharavindh 9y ago
Tried to read it on the phone. Got a huge blank page, with a few chat heads. Wish people stick with basic HTML if they don't know what they're doing...
- acct1771 9y ago
  Are you sure the page loaded? What browser are you using? The blog, and its linked Toyota page, both work well for me in the Materialistic(HN reader) WebView.
  - reacharavindh 9y ago
    iOS 10, Safari, private mode This is all I see.. https://imgur.com/a/YdhZj https://imgur.com/a/YdhZj
- infogulch 9y ago
  Works ok for me in FF for Android.
- igravious 9y ago
  I think HN may need a link up top next to the `favorite' link labeled `talk' like on Wikipedia. So, 23 points by philipkglass 5 hours ago | flag | hide | past | web | favorite | 9 comments would become, 23 points by philipkglass 5 hours ago | flag | hide | past | web | favorite | talk | 9 comments That's where people and bots could post comments about the HTML/JS/CSS issues of the page in question and anything off-topic but page or site related. Come to think of it the talk page could also be where people could post "Yeah but Crystal" comments on Ruby threads and "Elon Musk is not all that" on SpaceX or Tesla threads. I honestly think this could reduce a good deal of the meta chatter on HN. Where could I go to prototype the idea? What do other think?
  - dotancohen 9y ago
    You should post the idea on the talk page.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- Kliment 9y ago
  Yeah the page is totally useless, but works ok with firefox's reader mode.
- neltnerb 9y ago
  The actual original release, which the linked page simply copied wholesale. http://newsroom.toyota.eu/toyota-develops-new-magnet-for-electric-motors-aiming-to-reduce-use-of-critical-rare-earth-element-by-up-to-50/ http://newsroom.toyota.eu/toyota-develops-new-magnet-for-ele...
Hextinium 9y ago
I am very curious how they create grains of the cerium and then coat them with neodymium to then fuse them together. I theorize that they first alloy the cerium and lanthanum together and then grind it to a correct particle size. Then they negatively electrically charge the rare earth particles and bond neodymium to it with vapor deposition but I don't know it that is possible at that scale. They would then press the particles together and heat them up so that they fuse but don't liquify. All of this looks very very cool I just have no concept for how it would actually happen.
- Hextinium 9y ago
  Never mind, I just found the answer to my own question but I find it interesting none the less. So as the solution of the three metals cool if done correctly the neodymium will come out of solution to form a mesh of neodymium around the grains of cerium and lanthanum in a similar way that pearlite forms from austinite and ferrite in steel. This will give them a "sponge" of neodymium to conduct the magnetic field but have the cerium and lanthanum act as filler. To explain what I am talking about way better than I ever could, this video is how heat treating steel will change it's properties and why different steels act the way they do. https://youtu.be/6jQ4y0LK1kY https://youtu.be/6jQ4y0LK1kY
  - neltnerb 9y ago
    If memory serves, in standard Nd-B-Fe magnets the neodymium also concentrates at the grain boundary in the same way. My guess is that the Ce/La is acting as a stabilizer for the internal structure replacing Nd that would otherwise have been stuck inside the crystallite.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- blueprint 9y ago
  > theorize You mean hypothesize
londons_explore 9y ago
This looks like it might be Toyota telling investors "If global neodymium prices skyrocket again, we'll have an edge over our competitors". The actual heat resistance is only of marginal benefit for automotive uses, where more cooling fins or a fan are usually better solutions.
- Iv 9y ago
  It is probably even more drastic than that: a few years ago China blocked export of some rare earths to Japan for a few months. This has led to several researchs aimed at reducing the strategical needs of these minerals in the Japanese industry.
  - adventured 9y ago
    That's exactly what it is: "Toyota is trying to make electrified vehicles less dependent on Chinese minerals" https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/20/toyota-is-trying-to-make-electric-vehicles-less-dependent-on-chinese-minerals.html https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/20/toyota-is-trying-to-make-ele... https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-20/toyota-readies-cheaper-electric-motor-by-halving-rare-earth-use https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-20/toyota-re...
- MertsA 9y ago
  Cooling fins and a fan don't do too much in some applications like a starter motor dealing with heat soak next to a nice, toasty engine.
  - nugi 9y ago
    If your starter is heat soaked, you have bigger issues than some demagnitization.
- fyfy18 9y ago
  Neodymium starts to lose magnetivity above 80C, and ICE usually run at a higher temperature than this. Don’t forget Toyota is probably the biggest manufacturer of hybrid engines, and in their setup the cooling fluid runs through both the ICE and electric motors.
donquichotte 9y ago
How is this special? I used to work at a company that makes pumps with magnetic bearings. To pump hot liquids, we needed special magnets with higher Curie temperatures than traditional Neodymium magnets. Our high-temperature products had Samarium-Cobalt magnets and ran, if memory serves, up to almost 200°C.
- aidenn0 9y ago
  How did coercivity compare to traditional Nd magnets?
- dogma1138 9y ago
  Cerium and Lanthanum (metal) costs about 10 times less than Samarium or Neodymium.
- philipkglass 9y ago
  There's a pretty good overview here: https://supermagnetman.com/blogs/news/understanding-magnet-grades-and-magnet-tables https://supermagnetman.com/blogs/news/understanding-magnet-g... Neodymium-iron-boron magnets can have a higher energy product than samarium-cobalt, but require additions of expensive/rare heavy rare earth elements to work well at elevated temperatures. (Or require special microstructure modifications like Toyota has developed.) SmCo magnets have had good high temperature performance from the beginning, but a lower energy product. Other issues that discourage widespread substitution of SmCo magnets for NIB: - Samarium is significantly rarer than neodymium in economically exploitable rare earth resources (see table 1 here: https://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2013/1072/OFR2013-1072.pdf https://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2013/1072/OFR2013-1072.pdf) - The iron-boron balance of a neodymium-iron-boron magnet is cheap, whereas the cobalt in a SmCo magnet is relatively expensive.
philipkglass 9y ago
The headline is about the reduced neodymium content but the most interesting part of the development is good high-temperature performance without requiring any terbium or dysprosium. Additions of those expensive, almost-exclusively-China-produced rare earth elements have been how neodymium magnets are made suitable for high-power, high-temperature applications in motors and generators. Neodymium, cerium, and lanthanum are more common rare earth elements that have more good mineral resources outside China. Most wind turbines use electromagnets in their generators, plus gearing systems. So-called "direct drive" turbines use high strength permanent magnets and can have longer lifetimes since the gearbox is the fastest-degrading part of conventional turbines. But turbines with permanent magnet generators have been only a minority of the market, in part because affordable and assured supplies of key heavy rare earth elements are not available outside China. (Goldwind, the only wind turbine manufacturer presently with an all-direct-drive lineup, is Chinese.) Powerful magnets with less need for rare materials can improve wind turbines to charge EVs as well as motors to move them.
- shaqbert 9y ago
  While innovation to substitute an expensive ingredient from a potentially unreliable supplier is laudable, from a chemist/metallurgist point of view I wish there was more innovation in mining and cleaning up the process of getting rare earth in the first place. Every rare earth element increases option value and the potential to make further progress. The main reason rare earth are expensive is that they mining is done in decades old tech fashion, and dirty as hell. China does not seem to mind as much, as long as it is controlling a strategic resource. Finding higher concentration deposits, and improving the process of extracting the rare earths elements is something I wish to happen more of...
  - greendesk 9y ago
    I also hope for innovation in the mining business. This also seems to be underserved niche for start-up companies. From miners that I have talked with, this is a small-moving enterprise setup.
    - 9y ago
LeifCarrotson 9y ago
Copper induction motors use no magnets at all. 20 years ago, the control algorithms and power electronics required were prohibitive, but the tech now seems fundamentally superior to permanent magnet motors. Why are magnetic motors of such interest to Toyota?
- raverbashing 9y ago
  For several reasons. One of them is that induction motors don't work as a generator, their torque/speed curve is bad as well And magnets instead of electromagnets allow you to have brushless motors. You could go with a synchronous motor but I guess the efficiency is not very good
  - stevendhansen 9y ago
    You are incorrect. Induction machines are often used as generators. My employer uses them almost exclusively in the generator configuration. The Lorentz force is symmetric; in the generator mode of operation the magnetizing flux vector leads the torque-producing current vector instead of lags, but the physics still works the same. The induction torque speed curve is also very performant even when compared to PM machines so I don’t understand your criticism. Source: motor control engineer.
    - raverbashing 9y ago
      I stand corrected about not being able to use induction motors as generators, still As per wikipedia > An induction generator produces electrical power when its rotor is turned faster than the synchronous speed... An induction generator usually draws its excitation power from an electrical grid Which is not what they want in a car Also they do want good torque at zero speeds, while it can be done with induction motors it's not ideal
      - smaddox 9y ago
        The Tesla roadster uses PM free induction motors: https://www.tesla.com/blog/induction-versus-dc-brushless-motors https://www.tesla.com/blog/induction-versus-dc-brushless-mot... According to the article, the torque limitations are only for a poorly controlled drive current.

117 points by philipkglass 9y ago

Tried to read it on the phone. Got a huge blank page, with a few chat heads. Wish people stick with basic HTML if they don't know what they're doing...

acct1771 9y ago
Are you sure the page loaded? What browser are you using? The blog, and its linked Toyota page, both work well for me in the Materialistic(HN reader) WebView.
- reacharavindh 9y ago
  iOS 10, Safari, private mode This is all I see.. https://imgur.com/a/YdhZj https://imgur.com/a/YdhZj
infogulch 9y ago
Works ok for me in FF for Android.
igravious 9y ago
I think HN may need a link up top next to the `favorite' link labeled `talk' like on Wikipedia. So, 23 points by philipkglass 5 hours ago | flag | hide | past | web | favorite | 9 comments would become, 23 points by philipkglass 5 hours ago | flag | hide | past | web | favorite | talk | 9 comments That's where people and bots could post comments about the HTML/JS/CSS issues of the page in question and anything off-topic but page or site related. Come to think of it the talk page could also be where people could post "Yeah but Crystal" comments on Ruby threads and "Elon Musk is not all that" on SpaceX or Tesla threads. I honestly think this could reduce a good deal of the meta chatter on HN. Where could I go to prototype the idea? What do other think?
- dotancohen 9y ago
  You should post the idea on the talk page.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
Kliment 9y ago
Yeah the page is totally useless, but works ok with firefox's reader mode.
neltnerb 9y ago
The actual original release, which the linked page simply copied wholesale. http://newsroom.toyota.eu/toyota-develops-new-magnet-for-electric-motors-aiming-to-reduce-use-of-critical-rare-earth-element-by-up-to-50/ http://newsroom.toyota.eu/toyota-develops-new-magnet-for-ele...

Hextinium 9y ago

I am very curious how they create grains of the cerium and then coat them with neodymium to then fuse them together. I theorize that they first alloy the cerium and lanthanum together and then grind it to a correct particle size. Then they negatively electrically charge the rare earth particles and bond neodymium to it with vapor deposition but I don't know it that is possible at that scale. They would then press the particles together and heat them up so that they fuse but don't liquify. All of this looks very very cool I just have no concept for how it would actually happen.

Hextinium 9y ago
Never mind, I just found the answer to my own question but I find it interesting none the less. So as the solution of the three metals cool if done correctly the neodymium will come out of solution to form a mesh of neodymium around the grains of cerium and lanthanum in a similar way that pearlite forms from austinite and ferrite in steel. This will give them a "sponge" of neodymium to conduct the magnetic field but have the cerium and lanthanum act as filler. To explain what I am talking about way better than I ever could, this video is how heat treating steel will change it's properties and why different steels act the way they do. https://youtu.be/6jQ4y0LK1kY https://youtu.be/6jQ4y0LK1kY
- neltnerb 9y ago
  If memory serves, in standard Nd-B-Fe magnets the neodymium also concentrates at the grain boundary in the same way. My guess is that the Ce/La is acting as a stabilizer for the internal structure replacing Nd that would otherwise have been stuck inside the crystallite.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
blueprint 9y ago
> theorize You mean hypothesize

londons_explore 9y ago

This looks like it might be Toyota telling investors "If global neodymium prices skyrocket again, we'll have an edge over our competitors". The actual heat resistance is only of marginal benefit for automotive uses, where more cooling fins or a fan are usually better solutions.

Iv 9y ago
It is probably even more drastic than that: a few years ago China blocked export of some rare earths to Japan for a few months. This has led to several researchs aimed at reducing the strategical needs of these minerals in the Japanese industry.
- adventured 9y ago
  That's exactly what it is: "Toyota is trying to make electrified vehicles less dependent on Chinese minerals" https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/20/toyota-is-trying-to-make-electric-vehicles-less-dependent-on-chinese-minerals.html https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/20/toyota-is-trying-to-make-ele... https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-20/toyota-readies-cheaper-electric-motor-by-halving-rare-earth-use https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-20/toyota-re...
MertsA 9y ago
Cooling fins and a fan don't do too much in some applications like a starter motor dealing with heat soak next to a nice, toasty engine.
- nugi 9y ago
  If your starter is heat soaked, you have bigger issues than some demagnitization.
fyfy18 9y ago
Neodymium starts to lose magnetivity above 80C, and ICE usually run at a higher temperature than this. Don’t forget Toyota is probably the biggest manufacturer of hybrid engines, and in their setup the cooling fluid runs through both the ICE and electric motors.

donquichotte 9y ago

How is this special? I used to work at a company that makes pumps with magnetic bearings. To pump hot liquids, we needed special magnets with higher Curie temperatures than traditional Neodymium magnets. Our high-temperature products had Samarium-Cobalt magnets and ran, if memory serves, up to almost 200°C.

aidenn0 9y ago
How did coercivity compare to traditional Nd magnets?
dogma1138 9y ago
Cerium and Lanthanum (metal) costs about 10 times less than Samarium or Neodymium.
philipkglass 9y ago
There's a pretty good overview here: https://supermagnetman.com/blogs/news/understanding-magnet-grades-and-magnet-tables https://supermagnetman.com/blogs/news/understanding-magnet-g... Neodymium-iron-boron magnets can have a higher energy product than samarium-cobalt, but require additions of expensive/rare heavy rare earth elements to work well at elevated temperatures. (Or require special microstructure modifications like Toyota has developed.) SmCo magnets have had good high temperature performance from the beginning, but a lower energy product. Other issues that discourage widespread substitution of SmCo magnets for NIB: - Samarium is significantly rarer than neodymium in economically exploitable rare earth resources (see table 1 here: https://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2013/1072/OFR2013-1072.pdf https://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2013/1072/OFR2013-1072.pdf) - The iron-boron balance of a neodymium-iron-boron magnet is cheap, whereas the cobalt in a SmCo magnet is relatively expensive.

philipkglass 9y ago

The headline is about the reduced neodymium content but the most interesting part of the development is good high-temperature performance without requiring any terbium or dysprosium. Additions of those expensive, almost-exclusively-China-produced rare earth elements have been how neodymium magnets are made suitable for high-power, high-temperature applications in motors and generators. Neodymium, cerium, and lanthanum are more common rare earth elements that have more good mineral resources outside China. Most wind turbines use electromagnets in their generators, plus gearing systems. So-called "direct drive" turbines use high strength permanent magnets and can have longer lifetimes since the gearbox is the fastest-degrading part of conventional turbines. But turbines with permanent magnet generators have been only a minority of the market, in part because affordable and assured supplies of key heavy rare earth elements are not available outside China. (Goldwind, the only wind turbine manufacturer presently with an all-direct-drive lineup, is Chinese.) Powerful magnets with less need for rare materials can improve wind turbines to charge EVs as well as motors to move them.

shaqbert 9y ago
While innovation to substitute an expensive ingredient from a potentially unreliable supplier is laudable, from a chemist/metallurgist point of view I wish there was more innovation in mining and cleaning up the process of getting rare earth in the first place. Every rare earth element increases option value and the potential to make further progress. The main reason rare earth are expensive is that they mining is done in decades old tech fashion, and dirty as hell. China does not seem to mind as much, as long as it is controlling a strategic resource. Finding higher concentration deposits, and improving the process of extracting the rare earths elements is something I wish to happen more of...
- greendesk 9y ago
  I also hope for innovation in the mining business. This also seems to be underserved niche for start-up companies. From miners that I have talked with, this is a small-moving enterprise setup.
  - 9y ago

LeifCarrotson 9y ago

Copper induction motors use no magnets at all. 20 years ago, the control algorithms and power electronics required were prohibitive, but the tech now seems fundamentally superior to permanent magnet motors. Why are magnetic motors of such interest to Toyota?

raverbashing 9y ago
For several reasons. One of them is that induction motors don't work as a generator, their torque/speed curve is bad as well And magnets instead of electromagnets allow you to have brushless motors. You could go with a synchronous motor but I guess the efficiency is not very good
- stevendhansen 9y ago
  You are incorrect. Induction machines are often used as generators. My employer uses them almost exclusively in the generator configuration. The Lorentz force is symmetric; in the generator mode of operation the magnetizing flux vector leads the torque-producing current vector instead of lags, but the physics still works the same. The induction torque speed curve is also very performant even when compared to PM machines so I don’t understand your criticism. Source: motor control engineer.
  - raverbashing 9y ago
    I stand corrected about not being able to use induction motors as generators, still As per wikipedia > An induction generator produces electrical power when its rotor is turned faster than the synchronous speed... An induction generator usually draws its excitation power from an electrical grid Which is not what they want in a car Also they do want good torque at zero speeds, while it can be done with induction motors it's not ideal
    - smaddox 9y ago
      The Tesla roadster uses PM free induction motors: https://www.tesla.com/blog/induction-versus-dc-brushless-motors https://www.tesla.com/blog/induction-versus-dc-brushless-mot... According to the article, the torque limitations are only for a poorly controlled drive current.