TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – North America’s only vanadium mine developer, American Vanadium, on Tuesday said it had entered into a strategic association with German toolmaker and energy storage specialist Gildemeister to explore various joint venture and partnership arrangements focused on energy storage and micro-grid solutions in North America.
The companies in a joint statement said senior officials of both companies were in New York this week to meet with senior state, municipal and transit officials.
“Utilising Gildemeister’s fully developed and commercialised CellCube energy storage system and American Vanadium's stably priced supply of high-purity vanadium electrolyte, the companies together present a unique opportunity to cooperate in the US to rapidly supply the growing energy storage and renewable-energy market,” American Vanadium executive chairperson Ron MacDonald said.
“The companies will examine various business models that will allow for the rapid and economic adaption of vanadium-redox flow batteries,” MD of Gildemeister subsidiary Cellstrom Lars Möllenhoff added.
“We have commercialised a unique energy storage solution with our CellCube; a powerful, durable and low-maintenance large-scale vanadium-redox flow battery that can be incorporated into everyday energy systems. Our battery system ensures a clean, emission-free energy supply at all times, characterised by high reliability, high stability and very fast reaction times,” Möllenhoff said.
Mining Weekly Online previously reported the need for increasingly stronger steel than that prescribed by modern building standards and codes, as well as that its burgeoning use in new battery technologies had increased the demand for vanadium.
The transition metal, which is mainly produced as a by-product of iron-ore mining has, in recent years, seen a steady rise in demand from the steel construction industry as building regulations, especially in China, increasingly call for improved strength and lighter construction materials.
More recently, however, the development of large-scale vanadium-redox flow batteries for use in energy grid storage applications is opening up a new demand stream for the transition metal.
Traditionally, the metal was used to strengthen steel products. In fact, about 85% of vanadium is used in the high-performance steel industry, involving steel containing between 0.05% and 4% vanadium.
The other important use is in titanium alloys, where about 10% of vanadium, in the form of high-purity pentoxide, is converted into master alloys that are consumed in titanium alloy production. It is vanadium pentoxide that is increasingly proving itself as a versatile new player in the field of 'green' energy solutions.
American Vanadium’s flagship Gibellini project had a National Instrument 43-101-compliant resource of 131.36-million pounds of measured and indicated vanadium pentoxide grading 0.28%, and 48.96-million pounds of inferred vanadium pentoxide grading 0.17%.
American Vanadium's shares have gained about 35% in value in the past year and on Tuesday traded at 97 Canadian cents apiece on the TSX Venture Exchange.