There is a common misconception that battery recycling is mostly about lithium. It is not. The metals that pay for a recycling operation are usually cobalt and nickel, which are far more expensive per ton and far more supply-constrained. Lithium is the headline; cobalt and nickel are the margin.The 2022 patent US11316208B2 claims a process for recycling cobalt and nickel from lithium-ion batteries. The focus is the tell: a recycler optimizes its process around the metals that carry the value, and in high-nickel, cobalt-bearing cathodes, those are nickel and cobalt. The CPC codes pair battery-reclamation class H01M 10/54 with cobalt and nickel metallurgy classes (C22B 23, C22B 47), marking it as a metals-recovery process aimed squarely at the valuable elements.The economics are straightforward. A ton of spent high-nickel cathode contains thousands of dollars of recoverable nickel and cobalt. Recover them at high yield and the operation is profitable; recover them poorly and it bleeds. Lithium recovery is a bonus on top, not the foundation — which is why so much recycling IP concentrates on the nickel-cobalt fraction.This is also why chemistry trends matter to recyclers. As the industry shifts toward lithium iron phosphate (LFP), which contains no nickel or cobalt, the recycling math changes sharply: an LFP cell is cheap to make precisely because it has no expensive metals, which means it is also far less rewarding to recycle. The recycler's best feedstock is the carmaker's most expensive cell.The off-take implication is a tension. Cell makers want to move toward cheap, cobalt-free chemistries; recyclers want a stream rich in cobalt and nickel. Those incentives pull in opposite directions, and the resolution will shape which recycling business models survive. A recycler built for nickel-cobalt cathode may struggle in an LFP world.For readers tracking the supply chain, the diagnostic is simple: a recycling operation's economics live or die on the metal content of its feedstock. When you read a recycler's pitch, find the assumed cobalt and nickel grade. That number, more than any green credential, is what tells you whether the business pencils.