Earlier this year, a team of researchers from the UT Dallas’ Renewable Energy and Vehicular Technology Laboratory presented a solution to eliminate rare earth metals from electric motors and generators at the ARPA-E (Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy) Energy Innovation Summit.
The solution the team presented is called DSSRM, double-stator switched reluctance machine, produces more power and torque than traditional motor designs without the use of permanent magnets. Traditional motors are powered by an electromagnetic interaction between a rotor and a stator. The rotor is the piece of the engine that uses rare earth metals which are expensive, difficult to find and the mining processes for these metals releases large amounts of pollution.
