ALEXANDRIA, Va., April 2 -- United States Patent no. 12,266,772, issued on April 1, was assigned to Li Industries Inc. (Pineville, N.C.).

"Methods and systems for scalable direct recycling of battery waste" was invented by David Young (Sudbury, Mass.), Panni Zheng (Blacksburg, Va.), Tairan Yang (Blacksburg, Va.), Zheng Li (Blacksburg, Va.) and Michael W. Ellis (Blacksburg, Va.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Embodiments described herein relate to methods of recycling battery waste. In some aspects, a method can include applying a first heat treatment at a temperature of between about 100deg C. and about 700deg C. to the battery waste, the first heat treatment decomposing at least about 80 wt %...