Vanadium: It could change the world

Green giant project; Uranium Star has huge find of valuable element

Special to the Financial Post Published: Wednesday, August 12, 2009

The problem is that a power grid requires really big batteries -- and current battery technology can't scale up that big. And so the future of renewable energy -- and thus the future of climate change, and the planet -- may rest on a little-known element: vanadium.

Why is vanadium so special? Vanadium is a strategic metal that is already irreplaceable for engineering in aerospace, aviation, automotive, shipping and construction. This is because vanadium has a remarkable ability to make steel alloys both stronger and lighter. In fact, vanadium-titanium alloys have the best strength-to-weight ratio of any engineered material. These ultra high-strength and super-light steels are often called the plastics of the 21st century, and demand for them is strong and growing.

But while vanadium is most often associated with steel, it is poised to play a pivotal role in helping renewable energy achieve success. This is because vanadium also makes highly powerful and efficient batteries--batteries that have the potential for large-scale, power grid usage.

Vanadium batteries are chemically and structurally different from any other battery. For the most part, battery technology hasn't advanced in decades: they're toxic, hold only a few hundred recharge cycles, leak power when not in use and are prone to overheating (ever felt the battery heat up in your phone or your computer as it's charging? Imagine that on the scale of a football field).

But the Vanadium-Redox battery, invented at the University of New South Wales in Australia, could avoid these problems: They have a lifespan of tens of thousands of cycles, are non-toxic, do not self-discharge while idle and do not generate high amounts of heat when charging. On top of all that, the vanadium battery has a marvellous advantage over lithium-ion and most other types of batteries: It can absorb and discharge huge amounts of electricity instantly and do so over and over, making it the only battery technology today capable of connecting to power grids to help smooth out the unpredictable flow of energy stored from wind turbines and solar cells.

Vanadium may, therefore, hold the key to scaling renewable energy to national levels, helping reducing our dependence on fossil fuels.

Beyond these large-scale uses, vanadium has also proven to be effective at combining with Lithium-ion batteries to significantly improve their performance-- so the next generation of hybrid car batteries may also feature vanadium.

The future will be battery powered. The best battery will win. Vanadium makes the best batteries.

It's no wonder that Discover Magazine recently called vanadium "The element that could change the world." (October 2008).

The increasing demand for vanadium from both highstrength steels and new battery applications is raising total world demand for vanadium.