Vanadium

Please note that this page is currently under review.

Resource figures are current as at 31 December 2017.

Vanadium (V) is a soft, ductile, silver-grey metal that is primarily used with iron to make metal alloys for high-strength steel production. High-strength steel has a wide range of applications, including for gas and oil pipelines, tool steel, jet engines, the manufacture of axles and crankshafts for motor vehicles, as well as for reinforcing bars in building and construction.

Vanadium is also used in the production of ceramics and electronics, textile dyes, fertilisers, synthetic rubber, welding, as well as in alloys used in nuclear engineering and superconductors. Vanadium chemicals and catalysts are used in the manufacture of sulfuric acid, the desulfurisation of sour gas and oil, and in the development of fuel cells such as vanadium redox flow batteries and low-charge-time, lightweight batteries.

Vanadium is not found in its metallic form in nature but occurs in more than 60 minerals as a trace element in a range of rock types. It occurs most commonly in titaniferous magnetite deposits and in uraniferous sandstone and siltstone, as well as bauxites and phosphorites. Vanadium also occurs in fossil fuels such as crude oil, coal and tar sands.

Nearly all of the world's vanadium is derived from mineral concentrates (typically vanadium-rich and titanium-rich magnetite) separated from mined ore, or as a by-product of steel-making slags. According to the United States Geological Survey (USGS)¹, China, South Africa and Russia are the world's main producers of vanadium. Petroleum residue is another source of vanadium. Japan and the United States are understood to be the only countries to recover significant quantities of vanadium from this source. It is also recovered from wastes such as fly ash from coal combustion and waste solutions from the processing of uranium ores.

Vanadium is sold as vanadium pentoxide (V₂O₅) and, less commonly, as vanadium trioxide (V₂O₃) for non-steel applications and as the alloy ferrovanadium (FeV) for steel making. The most common FeV alloy is FeV80, but FeV40, FeV50 and FeV60 are also sold. The numeric part of the symbol refers to the amount of contained vanadium for example, FeV80 contains approximately 80% vanadium.

Trade in vanadium products tends to be opaque with no central market recording prices. Various trade sheets such as the Metal Pages, Ryan's Notes and the London Metal Bulletin record proprietary information for subscribers.

The vanadium market has always been linked to the steel industry, making it economically vulnerable owing to its sensitivity to market demand by developing countries. Figure 1 shows the price volatility of the vanadium market from 2002 to 2017. Of note, is the price surge from US$5.70 in 2004 to US$16.89 in 2005. This increase was related to the growth of global steel production that caused an increase in vanadium consumption and a commensurate depletion of stockpiles. Similarly, Australia’s reserves and resources of vanadium have also fluctuated over the years in response to the volatile nature of the vanadium market (Figure 1).

The USGS² cited the small number of vanadium projects being commissioned in recent years. However, this is rapidly changing as development of battery storage technology grows globally, favouring a rising interest in vanadium. Correspondingly, increased development activities of vanadium projects in Australia are also taking place in anticipation of the prospect of high future demand. This future market anticipation has also influenced the rise of the vanadium price during and beyond the period of 2017. The USGS reported an average price of vanadium pentoxide in September 2017 at US$5.05 per pound, an increase of over 50% from 2016 values which were $US3.38 per pound³. The USGS also noted the high price of ferrovanadium in September 2017 reaching $21.10 per pound⁴. Environmental issues have led to the closure of vanadium operations in China as it tries to address pollution. This has had a bullish effect on the price of vanadium pentoxide and, to an extent, on ferrovanadium as current availability has declined.

Figure 1. Vanadium price, Economic Demonstrated Resources (EDR) and Ore Reserves, 2002-2017.

JORC Reserves

In 2017, Proved and Probable Ore Reserves of vanadium, compliant with the Joint Ore Reserves Committee (JORC) Code, was approximately 1075 kilotonnes (kt; Table 1). Proved and Probable Ore Reserves account for approximately 27% of Economic Demonstrated Resources (EDR; Table 2). The remaining 73% of EDR comprises Measured and Indicated Resources.

Identified Resources

Australia's EDR of vanadium increased by 88% to 3965 kt in 2017, up from 2111 kt in 2016 (Table 2). Inferred Resources, on the other hand, decreased by approximately 27% in 2017. This has mainly occurred because project owners have shown increasing interest in developing their dormant vanadium projects, embarking on drilling programmes to upgrade existing resources (mostly Inferred to Indicated and Measured) to advance the development stage.

Accessible EDR

Some mineral resources are inaccessible for mining because of environmental restrictions, government policies or because they occur within military lands or national parks. All of Australia’s EDR of vanadium are considered to be accessible.

Exploration

Data on exploration expenditure for vanadium is not available in published statistics. However, individual resource companies have published exploration information. Neometals Ltd, for example, is actively exploring a ferrovanadium-titanium deposit hosted within the Barrambie Igneous Complex, which is a large, layered, mafic intrusive complex of the Meeline Suite that occurs along a narrow, NNW-SSE trend of the Archaean Barrambie Greenstone Belt in the northern Yilgarn Craton.

Neometals drilled over 5000 m utilising reverse circulation (RC) and diamond drilling during 2017 (2912 m) and 2018 (2681 m) at the project with diamond drilling focused on drilling within a defined resource area intended for metallurgical test work. The RC drilling targeted the strike extensions and the parallel structures. The company reported some of drilling’s significant intersections, including 71 m at 33.4% TiO₂, 0.8% V₂O₅ and 53 m @ 29.4% TiO₂, 0.7% V₂O₅.

Neometals is also exploring other prospective deposits within the Barrambie project, including the Virginia Hills prospect, which returned an initial drill intersection of 19 m at 16.4% TiO₂ and 0.40% V₂O₅. The prospect is located approximately 5 kilometres (km) to the west of Barrambie and is interpreted as a folded limb of the Barrambie deposit.

Australian Vanadium Ltd is also exploring the Barrambie Igneous Complex and reported the completion of 14 RC drill holes totalling 1089 m and three diamond drill holes for 383 m at their Gabanintha deposit. Australian Vanadium has reported some of the drilling’s significant intersections, including 26 m at 0.94% V₂O₅ and 61.9% Fe₂O₃ from 47 m depth and 17 m at 1.14% V₂O₅ and 66.5% Fe₂O₃ from 81 m depth. The company further stated that the majority of the drill holes were infill drilling at the resource defined areas to increase confidence and to upgrade the Inferred to Indicated Resources.

Immediately to the north and southeast of the Australian Vanadium project, Technology Metals Australia Ltd hold exploration tenements where they have conducted drilling programmes over the northern and southern blocks of their Gabanintha Vanadium Project. Technology Metals completed 13 diamond drill holes for a total of 1235 m with drilling results confirming the continuity of the high-grade mineralisation of the previously reported resources at the project’s northern block. Some of the drilling’s significant intersections at the Northern Block deposit include 27.5 m at 1.04% V₂O₅, 11.8% TiO₂ and 47.3% Fe and 73 m at 0.71% V₂O₅, 8.4% TiO₂ and 27.4% Fe. Correspondingly, at the company’s Southern Block deposit, an Inferred Resource was delineated from the 2232 m drilled from 23 RC holes. Some significant intersections from the this drilling include 17 m at 0.73% V₂O₅, 8.5% TiO₂ and 34% Fe from 18 m depth and 52 m at 0.89% V₂O₅, 10.2% TiO₂ and 39.8% Fe from 77 m depth.

Coziron Resources Ltd initiated 3800 m of RC drilling at its Buddadoo project. The main target of the drilling program was to define vanadium, titanium, copper and nickel mineralisation. Another objective of the programme was to obtain samples for geochemical analysis to test some historically high vanadium (1.7% V₂O₅) and titanium (20% TiO₂) occurrences associated with magnetic anomalies near the eastern margin of a gabbro in the Buddadoo Range.

Production

There are currently no operating vanadium mines in Australia although new grass-roots projects are advancing toward production (see Industry Developments below). The most recent mining activity for vanadium in Australia was carried out at Atlantic Ltd’s Windimurra Vanadium Project, which was suspended in 2014. Driven by new battery storage technologies, the present momentum of the vanadium market has spurred new exploration as well as encouraged mining feasibility studies of mothballed projects.

World Ranking

The USGS estimates that world economic resources of vanadium are about 19 million tonnes (Mt) but total world resources exceed 63 Mt. China dominates world vanadium resources with 42% followed by Russia at 23%, and Australia at 18% (Table 3). However, because vanadium can be recovered as a by-product or a co-product of steel slags, the estimated world resources are not fully indicative of available supply.

The USGS estimates that world production of vanadium from all sources in 2017 totalled more than 80 kt compared to 79 kt in 2016, with China producing 43 kt, Russia 16 kt and South Africa 13 kt (Table 4).

Industry Developments

This section highlights the recent company exploration and development-related activities occurring at leading vanadium projects. Global demand differs for each type of commodity and, as the technology in battery storage advances, so does the interest in vanadium. Present high interest in vanadium is reflected in some greenfield vanadium projects through increased exploration drilling and technical studies as project owners anticipate advancing their projects into production. All reported reserves and resources are compliant with the JORC Code unless otherwise stated. Major deposits are shown in Figure 2 on a total resource basis.

Figure 2. Australian vanadium deposits as at 31 December 2017.
kt V = thousand tonnes of vanadium content. Resource size is based on total resources (Measured + Indicated + Inferred, inclusive of Ore Reserves).

Citation

Bibliographical reference: Summerfield, D., 2019. Australian Resource Reviews: Vanadium 2018. Geoscience Australia, Canberra. http://dx.doi.org/10.11636/9781925848274

References