Industry trade reports currently list Dalian Rongke Power Co. Ltd. as the top manufacturer of vanadium redox flow batteries worldwide. Skievaski also worries about whether China will stop making...
Before ore was first dug out of Minas Ragra, vanadium had sold for $4,000 per pound. Soon after the mine closed for the first time, vanadium was selling for only $1.80 per pound. In 1919 the mine was sold again, to Jacob L. Replogle and Charles M. Schwab, who had established the Vanadium Corporation of America.
AMG Vanadium has a very rich history, dating back to 1952, that has shaped the Company into what it is today: the global leader in environmentally responsible management and recycling of spent refinery catalysts. Our history propels our mission, vision, and purpose to improve the environmental footprint of our world.
Vanadium is a metal which was discovered by the Swedish scientist Sefstrom in 1831. He named it after Vanadis the Swedish Goddess of Beauty and Fertility because of the attractive brilliant colours of the chemical compounds in which it was first found.
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Vanadium was a rare metal, but for 100 years after its first discovery in 1801 no one cared—until a chemist discovered it strengthened steel.
That day, Antenor Rizo Patrón Lequérica and Eulogio E. Fernandini de la Quintana rode their horses to Minas Ragra, a windswept, barren area on the edge of the Andes about 100 miles (161 kilometers) north of the capital, Lima, and more than 25 miles (40 kilometers) from the nearest railway. The high altitude, 3 miles (5 kilometers) above sea level, turned even a short amble into an exhausting proposition. But the two had made the grueling journey for a reason. Fernandini owned a nearby lead, silver, and copper mine, as well as a smelter to refine the ores. Rizo Patrón managed the smelter laboratory. In search of fuel to power the smelter, they collected samples of any rock that looked burnable. After filling their packs they got on their horses for the return journey.
As night approached and temperatures dropped below freezing, the two men lodged at Hacienda Hayarragra, about 12 miles (19 kilometers) from Minas Ragra. To warm their icy room they burned one of the samples—a shiny lump of what looked like coal. Though the samples did not appear to contain pyrite or any other familiar sulfide minerals, the burning lump produced a surprisingly large amount of poisonous sulfurous gas. Rizo Patrón analyzed the sample on his return to the lab and discovered a new mineral, one that contained vanadium. While Rizo Patrón got naming rights—he called it patronite (VS4), after himself—Fernandini applied for mining property rights.
Vanadium steel became a player in some of the major advances of the era: it appeared in parts of the Panama Canal lock gates and in the first plane-mounted cannon in World War I, as well as in Ford''s Model T.
Fernandini had no objection to selling: he knew he lacked the resources to develop the mine. He sold it to Flannery for 2,000 Peruvian pounds (approximately U.S. $10,000) and 10% of the stock in the new company, the American Sales Company. Flannery then established the American Vanadium Company, and the mine opened for business the very next year.
Equipment had to be lugged to the remote site, local miners hired, and lodging built for them. Only 201 metric tons of vanadium ore were mined in 1907, for a total of 28.2 metric tons of vanadium pentoxide (V2O5). Between the mining in Peru and the smelting in Pennsylvania, the ore traveled almost 3,800 miles (6,120 kilometers), first on the backs of llamas and then via rail and ship. Production quickly ramped up; by 1910 output had increased to 3,130 metric tons containing 702.4 metric tons of V2O5. The extremely high-grade ore contained up to 40% V2O5, consisting of patronite and its various oxide minerals.
The vanadium from Minas Ragra changed the world''s steel industry. Before Flannery''s purchase of the mine vanadium steel-alloy production in the United States was less than 1,000 tons per year; after the Minas Ragra mine and the Bridgeville smelter began operating, production increased to 800,000 metric tons in 1916, reaching an annual rate of 1,100,000 metric tons in 1919. Vanadium steel became a player in some of the major advances of the era: it appeared in parts of the Panama Canal lock gates and in the first plane-mounted cannon in World War I, as well as in Ford''s Model T.
The approximately 36,000 metric tons of V2O5 the Minas Ragra mine produced between 1907 and 1955 came from only a small area 360 feet (110 meters) in length, 32 feet (10 meters) wide, and 200 feet (60 meters) deep, inside of an open pit measuring only 850 feet (260 meters) by 400 feet (120 meters). This one small body of ore in Peru allowed its American owners to satisfy more than half the entire world''s demand for vanadium and to control the world vanadium market for over 50 years. For much of that time the ore was dug by hand, dumped into ore carts, and then pushed out of the mine by workers. Only in 1943 did a diesel locomotive replace hard labor in moving ore carts.
In 1909 Flannery learned that his sister had cancer. He withdrew from his vanadium interests and in 1911 established the Standard Chemical Company in Pittsburgh to concentrate on producing radium for cancer treatment. His former company carried on without him, though the mine twice became a victim of its own success. The rapid increase in vanadium production caused the price to collapse to the point where mine operations were shut down between 1912 and 1913 and again in 1922. Before ore was first dug out of Minas Ragra, vanadium had sold for $4,000 per pound. Soon after the mine closed for the first time, vanadium was selling for only $1.80 per pound.
But by 1929 the high-grade vanadium ore was nearly exhausted, and attempts to treat low-grade ore proved unsuccessful. The mine closed in 1930, only to reopen in 1934 when a new process to treat low-grade ore was introduced. The ore was calcined with salt and the vanadium leached out with sulfuric acid. Production of V2O5 reached 2,073 metric tons in 1940 and continued until 1955, by which time the mine''s mineral reserves were almost exhausted. The mine closed, its workings were dismantled, and in 1959 the mineral claims were abandoned.
Today, the main sources of vanadium come from deposits of titaniferous magnetite in South Africa, China, and Russia, and uranium-bearing sandstone and phosphate rock in the United States. Most of these contain less than 2% V2O5, only a twentieth of the amount contained in Minas Ragra ore at its peak. Other vanadium sources include heavy petroleum, oil sand, and coal. The total world production is approximately 100,000 metric tons of V2O5 per year.
The open-pit mine at Minas Ragra is now filled with water, but the railway grades and the foundations of the beneficiation plant at Jumasha still remain visible. High in the Andes, they serve as monuments to the first commercial vanadium production in the world.
Atsushi Gomiis the chief representative of the Peruvian branch of Mitsui Mining & Smelting Company, Ltd., and the president of its subsidiary company, Compañia Minera Santa Luisa S.A.
Robert D. Whethamis a retired land-use planner and author of several books on railway subjects, including two recent publications on the history of railway development in Peru.
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The Vanadium Corporation of America (VCA) was organized in September 1919 to carry on the operations at Mira Ragra. With the rapid growth of the American metals market, VCA began expanding with various acquisition across the US and in 1952 founded the ferro alloy plant in Cambridge, Ohio (current site of AMG Vanadium) with construction completed in 1953. The Cambridge facility allowed VCA to relocate its vanadium production facility from Pittsburgh to the geographic heart of its main customer, the U.S. Steel industry. In 1967, VCA merged with the Foote Mineral Corporation (Foote Mineral), a subsidiary of Newmont Mining Company.
Foote Mineral completed updates to the facility in 1970 which allowed the company to produce a niche market ferrovanadium product with several recognizable metallurgical advantages in steelmaking called Ferovan®. These updates also allowed the company to utilize, at the time, an economical vanadium bearing slag for a raw material source. FMC operated the facility until 1987, when Shieldalloy Metallurgical Corporation (SMC), a subsidiary of Metallurg, Inc. and predecessor company of AMG Vanadium LLC (AMG V) acquired the business.
Upon acquiring the facility, products manufactured included different grades of ferrovanadium, complex boron alloys, vanadium chemicals, vanadium containing iron ingots, and slag co-products. However, SMC recognized disadvantages with the facility''s raw material supply and began making changes in this area and the product mix in addition to completing expansion updates such as commissioning a new roaster in 1991.
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Vanadium is a metal which was discovered by the Swedish scientist Sefstrom in 1831. He named it after Vanadis the Swedish Goddess of Beauty and Fertility because of the attractive brilliant colours of the chemical compounds in which it was first found. It was well named for it has provided material for the brilliant thoughts of the fertile minds of scientists and technologists who, for over 150 years, have developed and continue to develop new materials for the benefit of humanity.
Sefstrom in his painstaking study at the laboratories of the Eckersholm iron works which obtained iron ore from the Taberg iron mountain at Falun in Sweden, separated vanadium from chromium and uranium with which it had been confused. He must have considered the automobile a fiction of the imagination, flying a dream, and space travel a fantasy.
Yet his discovery, which preceded Bessemer''s process for making steel by nearly twenty years and the first production of alloy steel by Mushet by over thirty years, was essential for the development of alloy steels and titanium alloys with their remarkable properties. Without these steels and titanium alloys it would not have been possible for man to design machines which enable him to drive across the earth, fly in the sky and travel into space.
Other pioneers in the isolation and use of vanadium were J. Berzelius, in Sweden, Sir Henry Roscoe and Professor Arnold in the UK. An early user of vanadium was Henry Ford in his Model T who who specially highlighted the use of vanadium.
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