The story is unfortunately sparse on the details of how the recycling works (whether there is any truly new idea).
Based on the "furnace" picture and language about melting down the batteries, it seems like their approach is to just treat the incoming batteries as "enriched ore" and proceed with an energy-intensive, standard, metal extraction process.
So what they save is the huge amount of energy and dirtiness required to dig in the earth (in the few suitable places on the earth) for rocks with <.5% metal content and crush those rocks into dust, which is substantial, but not revolutionary?
Based on the "furnace" picture and language about melting down the batteries, it seems like their approach is to just treat the incoming batteries as "enriched ore" and proceed with an energy-intensive, standard, metal extraction process.
So what they save is the huge amount of energy and dirtiness required to dig in the earth (in the few suitable places on the earth) for rocks with <.5% metal content and crush those rocks into dust, which is substantial, but not revolutionary?