对中美洲能源公司（MidAmerican Energy）来说，在其艾奥瓦州奥布赖恩县的高地（Highland）风电场被拆除和解体的风力涡轮机就是废品。但对布赖恩·迪塞尔霍斯特（Brian Diesselhorst）而言，它们是富矿。
To MidAmerican Energy, the wind turbines being taken down and dismantled at its Highland wind farm in O’Brien County, Iowa, are junk. To Brian Diesselhorst, they are the mother lode.
迪塞尔霍斯特是帕拉丁环保科技公司（Paladin EnviroTech）的首席执行官，这家回收公司正着眼于扮演稀土金属供应商的新角色。美国正试图减少在稀土方面对中国的依赖，稀土广泛应用于从无人机到核磁共振扫描仪的各种产品。帕拉丁是押注通往新供应的最快途径要经过废品场的几家风险企业之一。
Diesselhorst is chief executive of Paladin EnviroTech, a recycling company eyeing a new role as a supplier of rare-earth metals. The U.S. is trying to reduce its reliance on China for rare earths, which go into everything from drones to MRI scanners. Paladin is among a few ventures betting that the quickest route to new supply goes through the junkyard.
像镝和钕这样名字的稀土金属被用于电动马达中的磁铁。迪塞尔霍斯特正在市场上寻找各种过时的电子产品。但退役的风力涡轮机——其房间大小的发电机在某些情况下装有巨大的稀土磁铁——是他的头号目标。帕拉丁估计，一些更新的型号可以包含将近一吨稀土，价值接近10万美元。
Rare-earth metals with names like dysprosium and neodymium are used in magnets that go into electric motors. Diesselhorst is in the market for various expired gadgets. But retired wind turbines, whose room-size generators in some cases house huge rare-earth magnets, are his No. 1 target. Some more recent models can contain nearly a ton of rare earths, worth close to $100,000, Paladin estimates.
随着美国风电行业逐渐老化，有数千台达到退役年限的涡轮机等待被开采。早期型号中只有一小部分含有稀土——在高地设施中被替换的涡轮机中有20%含有稀土——但在功率更大的涡轮机中，它们变得很常见。这些涡轮机现在开始被替换，因此这部分废品来源正逐渐变得更有价值。
There are thousands of retirement-age turbines waiting to be harvested as America’s wind industry ages. Only a fraction of the earlier models contain rare earths—20% of the turbines being replaced at the Highland facility have them—but they became commonplace in more-powerful turbines. Those are now starting to be replaced, so this source of waste is gradually becoming more valuable.“That’s why it was critical for us to get into the game now,” said Diesselhorst, who says he believes Paladin is the first company to start harvesting this source of rare earths.
“这就是为什么我们现在切入这个领域至关重要，”迪塞尔霍斯特说道，他相信帕拉丁是第一家开始开采这一稀土来源的公司。中国通过向国内企业提供财政支持并以倾销市场来粉碎初露头角的竞争对手，历经数十年确立了其稀土主导地位。去年，随着对美贸易战升温，北京方面通过实施出口限制秀出肌肉，暴露出西方制造商对中国的依赖。
China established its rare-earth dominance over decades by providing financial support for domestic companies and flooding the market to squash nascent competitors. Last year, with the trade war with the U.S. heating up, Beijing flexed its muscles by imposing export restrictions that laid bare Western manufacturers’ dependency on China.
回收企业是打破这种遏制手段的努力的一部分。特朗普政府正在为矿业风险投资提供数十亿美元资金，但这些投资需要多年才能见到成效。
Recycling ventures are one part of a drive to loosen that chokehold. The Trump administration is providing billions of dollars for mineral ventures, but the investments will take years to pay off.
在大多数情况下，退役的老旧涡轮机被更好的涡轮机所取代。伯克希尔哈撒韦公司（Berkshire Hathaway）旗下拥有该地块的公用事业公司中美洲能源的项目开发副总裁亚当·雅布隆斯基（Adam Jablonski）表示，高地风电场的涡轮机已经旋转了十年，还可以再服役十年。
For the most part, the old turbines being taken out of service are replaced with better ones. Those at the Highland wind farm have been spinning for a decade and could serve another decade, according to Adam Jablonski, vice president of project development at MidAmerican Energy, the Berkshire Hathaway-owned utility that owns the site.
雅布隆斯基说，用叶片长20%的更好型号替换它们，将使每个涡轮机多供应约15%的电力——在电力需求不断上升、开发新能源项目缓慢且昂贵的情况下，这是一个福音。
But replacing them with better models, with blades 20% longer, will let each supply about 15% more power, Jablonski said—a boon when electricity demand is rising and developing new energy projects is slow and expensive.
中美洲能源将中西部地区拥有丰富储量的两样东西——风力和空间——转化为了美国所有公用事业公司中最大的风电业务。在其3700台涡轮机中，它已经替换了近1500台。金属回收商尽可能地收集了他们能收集的东西，但在帕拉丁出现之前，其中一些涡轮机所包含的稀土金属都被白白浪费了。
MidAmerican has turned two things the Midwest has in abundance—wind and space—into the largest wind-power business of any U.S. utility. It has already replaced nearly 1,500 of its 3,700 turbines. Metal recyclers harvested what they could, but until Paladin came along the rare-earth metals that some of them contained were going to waste.A barrier to entry is the cumbersome task of dismantling turbines.
进入该行业的一个障碍是拆卸涡轮机的繁琐任务。起重机必须拆除叶片和机舱——即容纳涡轮机发电机的房间大小的外壳。然后用液压剪和其他设备将部件切碎，并装载到重型卡车上。“你要处理的是重达8万到12万磅的部件，必须把它们装载到平板车上，”负责监督公司稀土和其他关键矿产供应的帕拉丁高管卢克·雷（Luke Wray）说。“你身处荒郊野岭的一块田地里。如果你遇到泥浆，或者踩在黏土上，且地基不够稳固，你的起重机就有可能翻倒。”
Cranes have to remove the blades and the nacelles—the room-size housings that contain the turbine generators. Then the components are sliced up with hydraulic shears and other equipment and loaded onto heavy-duty trucks. “You’re dealing with 80-to-120,000-pound pieces that you’ve got to load on flatbeds,” said Luke Wray, the Paladin executive charged with overseeing the company’s supplies of rare earths and other critical minerals. “You’re on a field in the middle of nowhere. If you’ve got mud, or you’re on clay, and the groundsoil isn’t sturdy, you could have a crane tip over.”
在一次作业中，当承包商使用炸药来砍倒涡轮机时，重达30多吨的轮毂最终深深埋在黏土中，不得不费力地进行挖掘。另一个风险来自风力本身——强风会对被起重机移动的叶片造成严重破坏。
On one job, when contractors were using explosives to fell turbines, hubs weighing more than 30 tons ended up buried deep in clay and had to be arduously excavated. Another risk comes from the wind itself—strong gusts can play havoc with blades being moved by cranes.
另一个阻碍是以成本效益高的方式分离材料的挑战，这样就可以将备受追捧的稀土分离出来、磨碎并转化为制造新磁铁的金属。帕拉丁与关键材料回收公司（Critical Materials Recycling）合作，这是一家位于艾奥瓦州布恩的公司，该公司正在将埃姆斯国家实验室（Ames National Laboratory）开发的一种浸出工艺商业化，以从电子垃圾中提取几乎所有的稀土。
The other deterrent is the challenge of separating materials cost-effectively so the sought-after rare earths can be isolated, ground up and turned into metal for new magnets. Paladin works with Critical Materials Recycling, a Boone, Iowa company that is commercializing a leaching process developed at Ames National Laboratory to extract nearly all the rare earths from electronic waste.
回收商主要以铜为目标。涡轮机的布线和其他部件中含有几吨铜，按今天的价格计算，一吨价值约1.45万美元。
Recyclers primarily targeted copper. Turbines contain several tons of copper in their wiring and other components, with a ton worth roughly $14,500 at today’s prices.
稀土更难分离且价值较低，通常与钢铁一起回收，并最终作为一种被称为炉渣的副产品不可挽回地丢失。近年来，几家美国电池回收企业陷入困境，部分原因在于它们无法获得足够的原料并降低成本。
Rare earths, harder to separate and less valuable, are generally recycled alongside steel and end up irretrievably lost in a byproduct called slag. Several U.S. battery-recycling ventures ran into trouble in recent years in part because they couldn’t source enough feedstock and bring costs down.
迪塞尔霍斯特指望能获得足够的涡轮机来高效运营回收业务。帕拉丁预测，明年风力涡轮机磁铁将占其处理吨位的约40%，核磁共振机器和电动汽车马达各占约25%，硬盘驱动器占最后10%。
雷在美国各地排好了约500台涡轮机的采购管线。在公司位于佛罗里达州坦帕的办公室里，墙上挂着唐吉诃德——这位与风车搏斗的虚构骑士——的海报，角落里挂着雷的一张较小的肖像。
Diesselhorst is counting on securing enough turbines to run the recycling operation efficiently. Next year, Paladin forecasts, wind-turbine magnets will account for roughly 40% of its tonnage, with MRI machines and EV motors contributing about 25% each and hard drives accounting for the last 10%.Wray has lined up a pipeline of about 500 turbines across the U.S. In the company’s Tampa, Fla., offices, a poster of Don Quixote, the fictional knight who tilted at windmills, hangs on the wall, with a smaller portrait of Wray in the corner.
致信爱德华·巴拉德（Ed Ballard），邮箱为 ed.ballard@wsj.com
Write to Ed Ballard at ed.ballard@wsj.com