Element Collection

Element Collection

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Neodymium Metal from Hard Drive Magnets, Part I

Note: There's been a lot of work done on this subject on Science Madness, and the actual procedure I used is a bit different (specifically Step 4 & 6). Once I actually complete this experiment, I will update or replace this thread with the final method.

This is the first in a many-part series of posts detailing my efforts to isolate pure neodymium metal from hard drive magnets. This has been an extremely exciting project that I've really enjoyed undertaking, and the journey is just as fun as the final result. I'll be making a video on this eventually, but it's been such a long process that I thought people might be interested in reading some occasional updates on it in the meantime.

This first post will be about the theory, and will detail my reaction scheme.