The Chinese Takeover Furphy, page-18

Lol imho, no matter how you may try to mangle the official ROMEO report with your selective cutting & pasting you are only fooling yourself & a handful of the other HRE sycophants here.

Do whatever you like, you simply cannot change the very clear message:

"In accordance with EU objectives to remove, or greatly reduce, the need for heavy rare earths in permanent magnets, ROMEO focuses its research and development first on several novel microstructural-engineering strategies that will dramatically improve the properties of magnets based purely on light rare earths elements, especially the coercivity, which will enable them to be used for applications above 100°C."

"The ROMEO consortium assembles the best European academic expertise in permanent magnetism together with world-leading magnet manufacturers and European companies who are eager to exploit these newly developed materials, especially within the “green energy” sector, while external advisory board members in the USA and Japan bring special expertise and global reach to the ROMEO consortium."

Project partners: http://www.romeo-fp7.eu/ROMEO_News_EditionFebruary2015.pdf

Project Results:

"Most importantly, the amount of HRE needed to improve the coercivity by 30 % is reduced to 0.2 mol %."

"used to produce powders from strip-cast HRE-free alloys"

"Powders and samples were prepared according to Task 3.3 and a good coercivity HcJ of 1600 kA/m was reached without HRE."

"Compared to earlier results the coercivity of the HRE-free magnets has been significantly increased"

"the foreseen objectives (to remove, or greatly reduce, the need for heavy rare earths in permanent magnets) will be achieved"

"will be achieved", not maybe, perhaps or eventually, but will be.

http://cordis.europa.eu/result/rcn/156247_en.html

Since the original posting I've had some private communication with one of the External Advisory Board members re Siemens claim at Roskills last November that they would get from 0.6% Dy in the D7 magnet to 0.1% Dy in the D1o magnet by 2017. His response: "I have no doubt about Siemens stated numbers and projected elimination / near-elimination of Dy".

What I am most surprised at is the incredibly definitive language these usually very cautious & conservative boffins are employing. No hedging (or silly cutting & pasting) for a great many apps Dy is pretty much a goner, period.

Dy/Tb will most likely remain an important part of NdFeB magnets for certain segments but the question is at what economic threshold given demand will be considerably less than the HRE spruikers would have you believe, despite the fact they have never quantified it. Will future Dy prices ever justify the cost of recovery from < 1% TREO?