ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 9 -- United States Patent no. 12,285,765, issued on April 29, was assigned to SOLARCYCLE Inc. (Mesa, Ariz.).
"Materials processing in solar module recycling" was invented by Pablo Ribeiro Dias (Oakland, Calif.) and Vicente Schaeffer Vielmo (Oakland, Calif.).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Embodiments relate to processing materials in recycling of used solar panels. A used solar panel may comprise components manufactured from materials of high purity, that are expensive to prepare from scratch. Examples of such high purity materials can include but are not limited to: metals (silver; copper; tin; lead), photovoltaic material (e.g., precisely doped crystalline silicon; CdTe)...