Discover Magazine: the element that could change the world: Vanadium

[rhody]

will V_50 bite?This story is over a year old, and a quick search on PF did not turn up any hits, and to me at least I think is worth a look: http://www.energydigital.com/Uranium-Star-Corp-Unearthing-new-power-source_31962" .
I realize this is a marketing and sales pitch over the virtues of this strategic metal.

That being said, is the information presented below more than hype, and is there a real future here ?

Canada's Uranium Star Corp. recently announced that it has found what may be the world's largest deposit of this element on its aptly-named Green Giant Project - a continuous 11-mile mineralized trend of vanadium spanning the entire length of the 194-acre property, in a country where international mining companies are investing billions of dollars.

and

Vanadium has been used for decades but is virtually unknown. Classified as a strategic metal, it has a remarkable ability to make steel alloys both stronger and lighter. When combined with titanium, it creates the best strength-to-weight ratio of any engineered material, making it invaluable to the aerospace, aviation, automotive, shipping and construction industries. Demand for these ultra high-strength and super-light steels is strong and growing.

and

What makes the Green Giant discovery truly significant, however - and has Uranium Star excited - is the pivotal role vanadium is poised to play 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. The Vanadium-Redox battery, invented at the University of New South Wales in Australia, is chemically and structurally different from any other battery. It has a lifespan of tens of thousands of cycles, is non-toxic, does not self-discharge while idle, and doesn't generate high amounts of heat when charging. On top of all that, the vanadium battery has a tremendous 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 reduce 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. The electric car industry is an area where vanadium could play a major role, supercharging and extending the life of lithium-ion batteries. Subaru's recently unveiled G4e concept electric car uses a new, exclusively developed next generation lithium-ion battery which employs vanadium technology to allow the battery to store two to three times more lithium ions than conventional lithium-ion batteries. The result: an increase in range from 24 to 124 miles on a single charge.

A few disadvantages I found in the http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Vanadium_redox_battery" forum:

The main disadvantages with vanadium redox technology are a relatively poor energy-to-volume ratio, and the system complexity in comparison with standard storage batteries.

Technical Descriptions:

http://web.archive.org/web/20061108034943/http://www.worldenergy.org/wec-geis/congress/papers/SkyllasKazacosm0904.pdf"
http://thefraserdomain.typepad.com/energy/2006/01/vandium_reflux_.html"

Rhody...

 

[anorlunda]

Quite a few people have tried, but no big success yet.

Numerous companies and organizations involved in funding and developing vanadium redox batteries include Vionx (formerly Premium Power), UniEnergy Technologies[14] and Ashlawn Energy[15]in the United States; Renewable Energy Dynamics Technology[16] in Ireland; Enerox GmbH (formerly Gildemeister energy storage) in Austria; Cellennium in Thailand; Rongke Power in China;[17]Prudent Energy in China;[18] Sumitomo in Japan; H2, Inc. in South Korea;[19] redT in Britain.,[20] Australian Vanadium in Australia,[21] and the now defunct Imergy (formerly Deeya).[22] Lately, also several smaller size vanadium redox flow batteries were brought to market (for residential applications) mainly from StorEn Technologies (USA), Schmid Group,[23] VoltStorage [24] and Volterion [25] (all three from Germany), VisBlue [26](Denmark) or Pinflow energy storage [27](Czechia).

However, similar flow batteries have caught the interest of utilities.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_battery