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Tungsten carbide recycling: your sorting picks the route
Tungsten carbide recycling sends worn inserts, round tools and grinding sludge back into the tungsten supply, either as reclaimed carbide powder or as fresh tungsten chemicals, and how cleanly a lot was kept decides which. We buy that used carbide in any form, pay the shipping from anywhere in the US, and pick up in every city in California, Arizona, Utah and Nevada: start on the quote form.
Follow a box of sorted inserts
USGS calls solid pieces, cemented carbide parts among them, hard scrap. An insert is the small replaceable cutting tip clamped in a tool holder, and USGS names used tool inserts as the hard scrap the zinc process starts from.
Clean hard scrap can take the direct route, the zinc process. USGS describes the scrap being sorted by grade (the recipe of carbide grains and binder), cleaned of brazing, crushed, and lowered into molten zinc under argon. The zinc reacts with the cobalt binder, the metal that glues the grains together, and the pieces swell. Vacuum distillation draws the zinc off again and leaves a porous mass still holding the carbide and cobalt, which is milled, screened, blended and carbon-adjusted into powder ready to press.
A 2021 paper by Zeiler and co-authors, led by the secretary general of ITIA (the tungsten industry association), calls zinc reclaim the most economic way to recycle cemented carbide. Reclaimed powder is commonly mixed into virgin batches at 10 to 50% by weight, and up to 100% when the feed is well-sorted production scrap.
The limit is that zinc cleans nothing: USGS calls it not a purification process, so careful sorting and removing oil, solder and refractory coatings first is essential. Whatever goes into the zinc with the carbide comes out in the powder.
Sources: USGS Open-File Report 2005-1028 (data year 2000); USGS Open-File Report 01-349; Zeiler et al. 2021, Int. J. Refractory Metals and Hard Materials 98:105546.
Follow a pail of grinding sludge
Sludge is soft scrap. USGS files it with the other fine particles: grinding sludges, loose powders, swarf (which OSHA defines as the fine particles of metal, graphite and carbide that grinding throws off) and turnings. A 2023 study notes that carbide grinding often uses a diamond-grit wheel with a water-oil emulsion as coolant, so the ground-off carbide leaves the machine wet and oily.
That oil sends sludge the long way round. The same study says oil, refrigerants and other impurities mean WC-Co (tungsten carbide with cobalt) sludge often requires chemical recycling, and ITIA says most soft scrap, and most hard scrap nobody sorted, goes that way already.
The chemical route takes the carbide apart. Zeiler et al. note the tungsten must first be oxidised, by air, chemicals or electric energy; then, as USGS describes it, the oxidised scrap is leached with sodium hydroxide into a sodium tungstate solution; a sludge holding the cobalt and other metals is filtered out and the solution purified. ITIA says the end product is virgin APT (ammonium paratungstate), the main high-purity intermediate for most tungsten products.
It costs more to run: USGS says chemical processes tended to use more reagents and energy, yield less and make more waste than direct methods. What that buys is purity. Zeiler et al. say products made from 100% scrap this way have exactly the same properties as those made from ore concentrate, and the route also recovers cobalt, nickel, copper, silver, tantalum and niobium. ITIA calls such processes "opening the door for practically infinite recycling of tungsten".
Sources: USGS Open-File Report 2005-1028 (data year 2000); Pacini et al. 2023, Materials 16(4):1347; ITIA newsletter on recycling, part 2 (2019, file dated 2024); Zeiler et al. 2021, Int. J. Refractory Metals and Hard Materials 98:105546; OSHA Metalworking Fluids: Safety and Health Best Practices Manual.
Scrap is the nearest thing the US has to a tungsten mine
No commercial tungsten mining has taken place in the United States after 2015, USGS says in its Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026. The same edition puts US net import reliance for tungsten above 50% in every year from 2021 through 2025, with China (including Hong Kong) supplying 26% of US imports of ores, concentrates and other forms over 2021 to 2024.
China put new export controls on selected tungsten items in February 2025, and over 2025 the Rotterdam price of APT climbed from $331 to $675 per metric ton unit (MCS 2026, Argus Media prices). Each of those units is 10 kg of tungsten trioxide, carrying 7.93 kg of tungsten.
How much US supply comes from scrap today is not public: USGS withheld its 2025 secondary tungsten figures as company data. The most recent USGS share we found is for 2000, when scrap supplied 46%. A May 2026 draft letter from ETTAC, a Commerce Department trade advisory committee, puts recycled tungsten at roughly 30 to 35% of US consumption; it is a draft recommendation, not a USGS figure.
A Commerce Department (BIS) allocation order published August 6, 2026 says tungsten waste and scrap under Schedule B code 8101.97.00.00 must remain physically in the United States from August 27, 2026 through August 27, 2027 unless BIS authorizes otherwise. Whether a given carbide lot falls under that code is a classification question.
Sources: USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026: tungsten; USGS Open-File Report 2005-1028 (data year 2000); ETTAC draft tungsten letter (May 2026, draft); Federal Register 91 FR 50701 (August 6, 2026).
Where used carbide drops out of the loop
USGS, in a report on the year 2000, cited a 1998 estimate that 35% of cemented carbide scrap is not recycled. The primary reasons it gave for throwing tungsten scrap away: no efficient collection for certain kinds of scrap, and contamination that makes recycling uneconomical.
Steel is the biggest leak. Zeiler et al. describe a worn drill head that is mostly steel by weight ending up in the steel scrap tray and then in structural steel, its tungsten and cobalt diluted and lost. ITIA says carbide attached, brazed onto or cast into steel parts is the main reason some segments recycle less. The 2021 global estimates from Zeiler et al. show the gap:
| Carbide segment | Estimated global recycling rate (2021) |
|---|---|
| Cutting tools | 55% on average |
| Each of the two other cemented carbide segments | 40% |
| All tungsten carbide products | 46% |
Sources: USGS Open-File Report 2005-1028 (data year 2000); Zeiler et al. 2021, Int. J. Refractory Metals and Hard Materials 98:105546; ITIA newsletter on recycling, part 1 (2018, file dated 2024).
Keeping your carbide clean enough for the short route
Zeiler et al. say sorting by the end user raises recycling, and carefully sorted scrap can go to direct recycling. At the bench that means:
- A bin for carbide and nothing else. No steel holders, chips, shims or screws. Take inserts out of their holders; a brazed tool (carbide soldered to a steel body) stays whole, in its own pile.
- High-speed steel kept apart. ITIA says about 95% of high-speed steel goes into machining tools such as drills, taps and milling cutters, shapes that carbide tools come in too, and Zeiler et al. show HSS scrap collected for an HSS smelter, a separate stream. We buy high-speed steel too, just not mixed in.
- Cermets bagged and labeled. Cermet inserts are based on titanium carbonitride, Ti(C,N), rather than on tungsten carbide, and the 2021 paper says the zinc process is not yet applied to them on an industrial scale.
- Coatings and braze left on. ITIA says coatings and solders must come off before zinc processing. That is plant work; just tell us which pieces are coated or brazed.
- Sludge sealed and named. Keep it in a closed, lidded pail and label which coolant or oil it came out of, since oil is what pushes sludge to the chemical route.
The sorting guide takes each kind of tool in turn.
Sources: Zeiler et al. 2021, Int. J. Refractory Metals and Hard Materials 98:105546; ITIA: tungsten in steel (2008 newsletter, file dated 2025); ITIA newsletter on recycling, part 2 (2019, file dated 2024); Pacini et al. 2023, Materials 16(4):1347.
Carbide recycling prices, and selling your lot to us
We are the buying end of tungsten carbide recycling, not a plant. We buy used carbide in any form, sorted or mixed, from inserts and end mills to rods, wear parts, mining bits and sludge.
Near you: in California, Arizona, Utah and Nevada we come to you and pick up, in every city; see pickup areas. Anywhere else in the US: ship it to us and we pay the shipping; shipping your carbide covers heavy boxes.
There is no price list here, for a reason. USGS noted in 2005 that prices of tungsten-bearing scrap are not published on a routine basis, and Zeiler et al. say metal prices are key drivers of recycling, against the cost of processing. USGS adds that, to a certain extent, higher cobalt prices encourage carbide recycling. A clean box of inserts and an oily pail of sludge are different lots, so we quote each from its form, weight and photos; scrap carbide price explains what moves the figure.
Use the quote form, email help@carbidebuyersusa.com, or call (877) 899-5778. We pay cash where state law allows; the state rules guide sets out what each state asks of sellers.
Sources: USGS Open-File Report 2005-1028 (data year 2000); Zeiler et al. 2021, Int. J. Refractory Metals and Hard Materials 98:105546.
Common questions
Tungsten carbide recycling near me: do you come to me, or do I ship?
In California, Arizona, Utah and Nevada we come to you and pick up, in any city. Outside those four states, send it by carrier and the shipping is on us. Start on the quote form.
Why is there no list of carbide recycling prices?
Every lot differs in form, mix and cleanliness, and metal markets move, so we price each lot from its form, weight and photos instead of printing a list.
Do you melt or process the carbide yourselves?
No. We are a family owned and operated business that buys used carbide; we run no zinc or chemical plant and make no tools.
Should I strip coatings or braze before selling carbide?
No. Leave coated inserts and brazed tools as they are and note which are which on the form.
More for sellers
Sorting carbide scrap
What to keep together, what to separate, and why
Learn moreSludge, swarf and powder
Carbide grinding sludge, swarf and powder
Learn more
Used inserts
Used indexable inserts, coated or not, chipped or worn
Learn more
Scrap carbide price
What a lot of used carbide is worth, and how to get a price for yours
Learn more
Ship your carbide
Packing heavy carbide so it arrives in one piece
Learn more
High-speed steel (HSS)
HSS drills, taps, end mills and tool bits
Learn moreReady to sell your carbide?
Send a few photos and a rough weight. From any state, you ship it and we cover the shipping; in California, Arizona, Utah and Nevada, we drive out to you.