ALEXANDRIA, Va., April 7 -- United States Patent no. 12,597,652, issued on April 7, was assigned to Ascend Elements Inc. (Westborough, Mass.).
"Nickel-metal hydride (NiMH) battery recycling" was invented by Kee-Chan Kim (Westborough, Mass.) and Matthew Eggert (Westford, Mass.).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Recycling of nickel-metal hydride (NiMH) batteries extracts substantially pure nickel based on adding a leach agent to granular cathode material resulting from agitation of the NiMH batteries to form a leach solution. A pH of the leach solution is maintained for precipitating iron, aluminum and lanthanide rare earth elements (REE) for yielding a nickel solution for forming a cathode materia...