Sustainable, cost-effective electric motors cut rare earth materials

Ships, airplanes, wind turbines and electric vehicles rely on electric motors to operate. Since these motors are typically made with rare earth materials, they come with a multitude of environmental and economic issues. For one, rare earths are a finite resource, which pollute the environment during the mining process. Not to mention, the global supply for these materials is controlled by a handful of countries overseas, making it expensive to mine and vulnerable to supply chain disruptions. 

A team at Texas A&M University is working to solve these problems. Dr. Hamid Toliyat, a professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Mehdi Seyedi, an electrical engineering Ph.D. student, and Dr. Dorsa Talebi, a postdoctoral researcher, are developing a rare earth free motor. The team plans to create a cost effective, compact, efficient and sustainable motor to cut out rare earths altogether and eliminate dependence on foreign markets.

“There are a lot of unethical mining processes for extracting this rare earth materials, which is also very energy consuming,” Talebi said. “There are a lot of other projects globally going on to mine rare earths in a more sustainable way but there is not adequate regulation. To satisfy the need and the demand of this growth in the industries, we need an alternative. Our motor would solve this need because it doesn't require rare earths anymore.”

For their two-year project, “Advancing electric vehicle propulsion: High power rare-earth-free electric motor development,” the team, led by Talebi, aims to replace rare earths like neodymium magnets with abundant and environmentally friendly materials such as copper. 

“Replacing the rare earth material on the rotating part of the motor with copper coils is much more accessible,” Talebi said. “It's also expected to be cheaper because it doesn't have expensive rare earth materials or permanent magnets for the propulsion system of a vehicle.  It basically drops a material from the supply chain of a product. With that, we are less dependent to foreign countries, and we have plenty of copper, so it’s more sustainable.”

To test their idea, they ran a simulation for proof of concept, and built a prototype to prove that their motor is feasible. The team is working to make their motor comparable in performance to rare earth motors currently used in electric and hybrid vehicles and more competitive with other rare earth free motors. 

“Our technology, in terms of power to weight ratio, is on par with motors that use rare earth materials,” Toliyat said.

“A lot of auto industry manufacturers have already started to get rid of rare earth materials and come up with the rare earth free motors,” Seyedi added. “But the options they have are limited, and they have significant issues. We hope that in this topology, we can solve most of those issues and create an option which is cost effective and efficient at the same time.”

The group received nearly $500,000 through a Type 2 award as part of Texas A&M University’s Advancing Discovery to Market (ADM) Innovation Awards program for projects close to market readiness. Ultimately, the team hopes to commercialize their motor and start their own company. They own issued U.S. patents and U.S. patent applications for this idea. 

“One of the main industries affected would be the automobile industry,” Talebi said. “This idea can also be expanded for wind turbines, renewable energies and transportation systems too.”

The co-principal investigator for this project is Dr. Alan Palazzolo, a professor in the J. Mike Walker ’66 Department of Mechanical Engineering.

Funding for this research is administered by the Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station (TEES), the official research agency for Texas A&M Engineering.

By Katie Satterlee, Texas A&M Engineering

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