Canada’s Electrochem Technologies & Materials has started using a novel process for commercial production of all-vanadium equimolar electrolyte solutions directly from vanadium pentoxide purchased on the market.
Production of the electrolyte for vanadium redox flow batteries “is now performed on demand” at Electrochem’s facilities in Quebec, using the company’s proprietary VRFBEX unit.
The process uses VEPT (VanadiumCorp-Electrochem processing technology)— which has been jointly developed with Vancouver-based mining and technology firm VanadiumCorp Resource.
VanadiumCorp said VEPT can produce “reusable vanadium electrolyte directly and sustainably from virtually any source for perpetual use in vanadium batteries”.
Electrochem is a private Canadian corporation that manufactures industrial electrodes, recycles rare earths and produces tantalum, tungsten chemicals and vanadium electrolyte.
Electrochem’s president and owner, Dr Francois Cardarelli, invented VEPT— to addresses the recovery of vanadium, ferrous sulfate, titanium dioxide, and silica from vanadiferous feedstocks such as titano-magnetite, iron ores and concentrates, wastes and other industrial by-products.
Cardarelli said “future licensees of VEPT could benefit from the vertical integration of Electrochem’s exclusive technology”. “This add-on process will allow converting electrochemically large tonnages of vanadium pentoxide vanadium electrolyte.”
In 2018, VanadiumCorp signed a letter of intent with Ultra Power Systems of the UK to jointly look at commercialising and deploying VRFB for microgrid applications.