What is Vanitec?

Vanadium is one of the most abundant, easily accessible and widely distributed metals in the earth's crust. Ores containing vanadium are largely available by simple open cast mining and they are economically smelted and converted into alloys for adding to steel and titanium.

Vanadium is easily converted into chemicals which have many industrial and domestic uses and which are also used in the preparation of other products.

It is an essential alloying element used in many types of steel for tools, buildings, bridges, automobiles, pipelines and machinery and for plant operating at high temperatures.

It enables titanium alloys to be used in high temperature zones of the compressors of jet engines and in airframes.

Its chemical compounds are indispensable for many industrial and domestic products ranging from spectacles and window glass, in which it prevents the passage of ultraviolet light, to decorative and industrial ceramics. A number of chemical reactions, as varied as the production of sulphuric acid, the preparation of vitamin pills, and the removal of hydrogen sulphide from natural gas and of toxic oxides of nitrogen from power plant effluent gases, are catalysed by vanadium chemicals. The multivalence nature of vanadium compounds enables vanadium salts to be used in Redox batteries for load levelling and other energy storage systems.

Workable deposits of various ores and hydrocarbons containing vanadium exist in over 17 countries in 6 continents and its continued supply and economic production are assured for the future.

Vanadium from some steels and chemicals is recycled.

It has been supplied continuously from the beginning of the 20th century, surviving wars and political and social upheavals. It will continue to be used in the 21st century when more applications are anticipated. These include the shells of fusion reactors, steels which are to be welded by autogenous processes as well as new steels and titanium alloys for power plant and aircraft and vanadium batteries for energy storage purposes. back

Latest Publications

Dispersion Strengthening Particles in Vanadium microalloyed Steels Processed by Simulated Thin Slab Casting and Direct Charging, Part 2 - Chemical Characterisation of Dispersion Strengthening Precipitates
J .A. Wilson, A. J. Craven, Y. Li and T. N. Baker

Vanadium in Thin Slab Casting

Vanadium Precipitation During Intercritical Annealing in Cold Rolled TRIP Steels
F. Perrard, C. Scott

TRIP Steel

Production and Characterization of Nano-size (V,W)C Power by Mechanical Alloying
S. Bolokang, D. Billing, C. Banganyi and S. Luyckx

Vanadium in Hard Materials