Production and use of vanadium in the world

PS Michelle UK Kent TN16 1AQ, International Vanadium Technical Committee

Introduction

    Vanadium as vanadium group elements in the Periodic Table a, atomic number 23, atomic weight of 50.942, a melting point of 1887 deg.] C, a boiling point of 3337 ℃. Pure vanadium is a shiny white with a hard texture and a body-centered cubic structure with a lattice factor of 3.024 Å. Vanadium is the 17th common element in the earth's crust and is rarely used directly as a simple substance. However, vanadium is indeed a valuable alloying elements may be added in the steel, iron, and titanium - aluminum - vanadium alloy form for aerospace. Vanadium compounds are also very useful and can be widely used in the production of catalysts, cosmetics, dyes, and batteries.
    Based on the wide-ranging use of vanadium, the global industry for the purpose of extracting and using vanadium has also developed. The industry exists on almost every continent of the world. The purpose of this paper is to provide some background information on the resources, production and use of vanadium.

Resource

    As mentioned earlier, vanadium is the 17th common element in the earth's crust and is widely distributed throughout the world. Figure 1 shows some of the more important deposits of vanadium. Vanadium is mainly found in ferrotitanium magnetites in China, Russia, South Africa, Western Australia and New Zealand, in oil deposits in Venezuela, Alberta, Canada, Middle East and Queensland, Australia, and in vanadium ore and clay mines in the United States. .

Figure 1 Main deposits of vanadium

At present, vanadium has the largest reserves in ferrotitanite, with a V ₂ O ₅ content of 1.8%; followed by oil deposits. So far, there has been no large-scale extraction of vanadium ore and clay minerals in the United States, ferrotitanium magnets in Northern Europe, and vanadium in Brazilian and Chilean deposits.
    Table 1 lists the recoverable and retained reserves of vanadium in the world. A recoverable reserve is a portion that can be economically extracted using existing technology. The retained reserves refer to the parts that can be extracted in the future using undeveloped technologies. The total reserves of vanadium are 63 million tons, of which only more than 10 million tons are recoverable reserves, while 31.1 million tons are reserves that can be mined in the future. Table 1 shows the main recoverable reserves, which are found in ferrotitanites in China, Russia and South Africa.

Table 1 Available reserves and retained reserves

[next] It is worth mentioning that, according to the current rate of use of vanadium, the recoverable reserves can be maintained for nearly 300 years.

Extraction of vanadium

In most cases, the primary product of vanadium is a by-product produced along with the extraction or use of other metals and oils. Such products of vanadium are usually in the form of oxides, V ₂ O ₃ or V ₂ O ₅ . Figure 2 summarizes the three important vanadium extraction processes.

Figure 2 Production of vanadium

In the vanadium extraction process, the most important route is the same as the integrated steel mills in China, such as Panzhihua in China, Haiweide in South Africa and Nizhny Tagil in Russia, from the intermediate slag generated in iron making and steel making. Extraction of vanadium in the form of ₂ O ₅ . In the iron making process of these steel plants, vanadium in iron ore is melted and dissolved into molten iron. The molten iron is oxidized and slag formed to form a slag containing 10% to 25% of V ₂ O ₅ , and finally sent to the steel making process through the ferric vanadium iron. The vanadium slag containing 10-25% V ₂ O ₅ is then subjected to a calcination/leaching process to produce a final product of vanadate or vanadium oxide. This process is used in 50% to 60% of the world's vanadium primary production plants.
A second important route for the production of vanadium primary products is the direct treatment of the above ore having a V ₂ O ₅ content of 1.8% in the calcination/leaching process to produce vanadate or vanadium oxides. Five or six companies in the world use this process to produce vanadium primary products, which are mainly distributed in South Africa and Australia, and their production accounts for about 25% to 30% of the world's primary vanadium production plants. [next]
The third production route for vanadium is to recover vanadium from power plant fly ash, spent catalyst and other residues. The process also produces vanadate or vanadium oxides by a calcination/leaching process. When recovering vanadium from spent catalyst, cobalt , molybdenum and nickel are usually recovered simultaneously. The vanadium products produced by this route account for about 15-20% of the world's vanadium production. Eight to ten manufacturers in the world use this process, which are mainly distributed in Japan and North America. However, as environmental regulations become more stringent, the potential for dumping vanadium-containing waste in various locations is decreasing. It is expected that most manufacturers of primary vanadium products will use this production process for vanadium recovery and use vanadium-containing waste as a raw material for vanadium production.
The world's primary vanadium products, vanadium and vanadium oxides, are produced at a rate of approximately 127,000 tons based on V ₂ O ₅ . According to the region, its output is shown in Table 2.

Table 2 Production of primary vanadium products in the world

The table clearly illustrates the importance of China, Russia and South Africa in the recovery of vanadium and Japan's secondary importance. It is worth noting that there is almost no production of primary vanadium products in Europe.
After the production of primary vanadium products, most of the vanadium products are processed by aluminothermic, heating or chemical processes into the world's most widely used final products, such as ferrovanadium, vanadium-aluminum intermediate alloys, vanadium chemical products and catalysts, and metals. Vanadium and vanadium alloys. More than 25 manufacturers in the world are engaged in the processing of vanadium products, which are found in various industrialized regions of the world. The focus has shifted from the production of vanadium primary products to the consuming countries of vanadium products. As can be seen from Table 3, for example, Europe does not mention in the list of primary vanadium product manufacturers, but plays an important role in the processing of vanadium products. In addition, Japan and North America are also important vanadium product processors, while South African and Chinese vanadium products are processed at a lower level than their vanadium primary products.

Table 3 Geographical distribution of ferro-vanadium production capacity in 1999

It should also be noted that some of the vanadium-containing slag produced by the steelmaking process can directly process the ferro-vanadium product without passing through the roasting leaching process. However, this is not a major route.

Vanadium consumption

In 1999, the consumption of vanadium was about 33,250 tons. The geographical distribution of vanadium product consumption in 1999 corresponds to the distribution of vanadium primary product production as shown in Table 4. Comparing Tables 3 and 4, it is further indicated that the processing of vanadium products is close to the consumption of vanadium. This also indicates a major international trade between North America and Europe, the main supplier of vanadium, the main supplier of vanadium, China, Russia and South Africa, which are the main suppliers of vanadium products. At the end of 1999 and early 2000, Australia also joined the ranks of vanadium suppliers. Its vanadium production is expected to account for about 13% of world vanadium production.

Table 4 Geographical distribution of primary vanadium products and vanadium products consumption in 1999

Vanadium is widely used in various industrial fields, and the most important application area is in the steel industry. According to statistics from the US Geographical Distribution Survey, 87% of vanadium was used in steel in 1998, while the remaining 13% was used in aerospace, chemical, and catalyst production. Of the remaining 13%, approximately 8-10% of vanadium is used to produce titanium-aluminum-vanadium alloys used in the aerospace industry, with the remainder being used in other areas.
Figures 3(a) and (b) show that vanadium consumption has also increased due to increased steel production. However, by comparing these data, it can be clearly seen that the increase in vanadium consumption is faster than the increase in steel production, indicating a new increase in vanadium consumption. This new consumption of vanadium is well represented by dividing the total vanadium consumption of vanadium in any year by the crude steel production of the year. Although this may overestimate the unit consumption of vanadium by about 13%, it compensates for fluctuations in vanadium consumption caused by fluctuations in steel production over the years.

Figure 3 a) Steel production, b) Consumption of vanadium from 1960 to 1999 [next]

Figure 4. Changes in vanadium consumption per unit since 1970

Figure 4 shows the change in vanadium unit consumption since the late 1970s. An important point to note is that the unit consumption of vanadium experienced a period of relative retrogression in the 1980s and early 1990s, presumably due to the widespread adoption of continuous casting processes to improve alloy yields and improved steelmaking efficiency. Caused by the overall initiative. In 1999, the consumption of vanadium rebounded strongly. The world average consumption reached 0.043 kg/ton, while the average consumption in western countries was about 16% higher, reaching 0.05 kg/ton.

Use of vanadium in steel

The verification and comparison of some existing statistics made by three different steelmaking countries, namely Germany, Japan and the United States (Figure 5), shows that these countries have both commonalities and obvious uses of vanadium. The difference. [next]

Figure 5 Consumption of vanadium in Germany, Japan and the United States in 1998 by end use
*Includes marine steel, heat-strength steel, steel for forgings and steel bars

It is clear that vanadium is used in the production of tool steel in all three countries. In addition, Germany seems to be different from Japan and the United States in the special structural steel grades that use vanadium. However, the steel clock is listed in the pipeline steel grade by Japan, and is classified as high-strength low-alloy steel in the United States. Therefore, the three countries use the same in this aspect of vanadium.
In addition to these same and possible differences, it is important to recognize that the addition of vanadium to steel brings benefits to steelmaking (reducing reheating temperatures, reducing transverse cracks, reducing rolling loads, rolling conditions on steel) The effect of the characteristics is reduced, etc.), which improves the properties (strength, toughness, ductility, formability, weldability, and abrasion resistance, etc.) of the steel, thereby reducing the cost. This reduction in cost refers not only to the reduction in the production cost of steel, but also to the reduction in manufacturing costs associated with the use of these vanadium-containing steels, such as the construction of buildings, bridges, ships, automobiles, railways, and the like. [next]

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