Pilot plant 7: ILPEA

The leading partner for Pilot Plant 7 is Ilpea. Ilpea is a company leader in the supply of plastic, rubber and magnetic parts and products mainly in the appliance and automotive market.

The Magnetic Division is the department of Ilpea where magnetic powders are manufactured and used as a filler to make flexible magnets. Industrie Ilpea Magnetic Division sells magnetic powders, magnetic compounds based on plastic and rubber, magnetic extruded profile and punched magnets.

Ilpea will be the ferrite powder supplier for its use in the fabrication of sintered magnets and flexible or moulded by injection magnets where the binder is plastic.

Innovation: substitution Nd-Fe-B powder with improved ferrite powder for permanent magnets

One of the main drawbacks of ferrite in view of practical applications is the trend of a decreased coercivity with decreasing operating temperature (for instance, in the case of motor performance in cold weather).

This long-time known and commercialized cheap material will be further improved in PASSENGER following two routes: (i) improving the composition (in particular the Fe203 content and its addition at a precise stage) during synthesis and tuning the subsequent sintering temperature; (ii) refining the microstructure by flash-milling followed by adequate sintering. From an economic point of view, both PASSENGER’s approaches make sense and are undoubtedly viable since the processing parameters (elemental constituents and processing temperatures) do not exceed those typically used in the standard fabrication of Sr-ferrite.

Fabrication of improved ferrite powder for novel rare-earth free permanent magnets

The objective of this task is the development of improved Strontium ferrite powder based on an increase in remanence and in coercivity.

PASSENGER will fabricate ferrite powder precursors with enhanced PM properties and enlarged coercivity to compensate for losses when decreasing temperature. The project will apply Ilpea’s expertise in controlling both the content of Fe2O3 during the synthesis of the ferrite material and the sintering parameters. The interplay of the tuneable synthesis process and the microstructural refinement achieved by ball milling has been demonstrated by JSI and IMDEA as a key factor to enhance the magnetic properties of ferrites.

ILPEA (Sr-ferrite producer) will work with JSI (expert on the study and characterization of ferrites) and IMDEA and
MBN (both working together for translation of the flash-milling method to industrial processing of ferrite powder.

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Fabricating fully-dense ferrite magnets

Fabricating sintered ferrite magnets