[ferro-alloys.com]  Worldwide vanadium demand will rise at a rate of 3.2% from 2017 to 2027 driven by increased demand for steel and rise of energy storage market, said Fortune Mojapelo, CEO and co-founder of Bushveld Minerals, reported by MiningWeekly.      

Vanadium is the best-performance battery-used metal in 2017, rate of rise reaching to 72%. Price of vanadium has risen 5 times than the price of vanadium in 2015.

Vanadium used for steelmaking accounts for 90 percent of the world's demand for vanadium. It is good news for vanadium used for steel that China has imposed mandatory requirements to increase the standard of rebar to eliminate the use of substandard steel in construction. In 2018, China's demand for vanadium will increase by 10,000 tons with growing rate of 30%.

Driven by growth of steel consumption of emerging economies, annual average growth speed of steel across the world will reach to 2.24% from 2017 to 2027, of which, quantity demand for vanadium will rise to acclimatize the requirement for quality improvement of steel worldwide.

Fortune Mojapelo believed if vanadium price continues to rise, vanadium used for steelmaking may be replaced with niobium. But energy consumption of vanadium is lower than that of niobium, and manufacturing technique needs great adjustment, so this kind of condition will not be appeared in the short term.

As regards energy storage, Fortune Mojapelo estimated that vanadium battery accounts for only 2 percent of the energy storage market in 2017, and this proportion is possible to reach 20 percent.

Mikhail Nikomarov, CEO of Bushveld energy company (a subsidiary corporation of Bushveld Minerals) and co-founder, estimated that power station needs will reach to 300 million kilowatt up to 2030.

Besides, according to questionnaire survey covered 500 stored energy specialist by  Greentech Media, 48 percent specialists think that liquid-flow batteries will be the main solution for public storage facilities. That's it, considering that 5,000 tons vanadium is needed to produce the vanadium redox flow battery storage system every million kilowatt-hours, so the vanadium used in stored energy can be widely developed in the future.

Fortune Mojapelo worried that worldwide vanadium supply is relatively centralized, 90 percent vanadium production comes from South Africa, and production of South Africa is declining, new capacity needs to be increased for the supply of vanadium in the world.

Currently, worldwide vanadium supply has already been in shortage, meanwhile, as vanadium producer financing difficulty, coupled with rising cost of construction and operating cost, at least 33% planned projects cannot be put into production in the short term.

Fortune Mojapelo founded that the key of supply of vanadium is not price of vanadium, but the demand for steel and growth rate of production. Thus he suggested that production of vanadium should strive for getting rid of by-product status, and realize independent production in the near future. He emphasized that the threshold must be removed to solve the supply shortage.

• [Editor:Wang Linyan]