ETH Spark Award honors recycling of rare earths

ETH doctoral student Marie Perrin and her supervisor Victor Mougel have received the ETH Spark Award 2024 for the most promising invention of the year. With their process, rare earths can be efficiently recovered from fluorescent lamps, flat screens and hard disk magnets, for example. Until now, these elements have hardly been recycled because they could only be separated with an enormous amount of energy and chemicals.

The prize was awarded for the first time on ETH Industry Day. This year, the event was embedded in NZZ Connect 's Swiss innovation conference Open-i. It took place on 21. and November 22 at the Zurich Kongresshaus.

According to a statement from ETH, the jury was convinced in its laudatory speech that this method paves the way for more efficient recycling of rare earths. The transition from the laboratory to the market is promising and so is the effect of the invention. "If our electronic waste becomes a resource and no longer ends up in landfill, our dependence on external procurement sources will decrease," said jury member Olivier Enger, Senior Innovation Manager at BASF, explaining the reasoning behind the award.

To market the technology, Marie Perrin and Victor Mougel founded a start-up called Reecover with Maria Pujos a year and a half ago. "After completing my doctorate a week ago, I can now devote myself fully to building up the start-up," says Perrin. ce/mm