Last week, US Vanadium announced that it has completed a US$5.8M upgrade of its vanadium processing operations in Hot Springs, Arkansas, USA.

Hot Springs processes secondary feedstock, recovered from a variety of post-industrial waste streams. The plant produces high-purity vanadium pentoxide and trioxide selling some of this but converting the rest into a range of vanadium compounds including vanadium tetrachloride, vanadium oxytrichloride, vanadyl sulphate solution and VRFB electrolyte.  

Upgrades include the installation of an industrial Belt Filter plant that will “…further improve the facility’s vanadium recovery rates, cut operating costs, increase recycling operations, and reduce the plant’s overall environmental footprint”.  Project Blue understands that capacity is unaffected. 

US Vanadium has been undertaking various improvements and upgrades at the site since acquiring it from Evraz (Stratcor) in 2019.  In January 2022, the company announced that a US$2M expansion of capacity to produce ultra-high-purity electrolyte has been completed, raising capacity to 4M litres per year. The electrolyte production facility is adjacent to the vanadium oxide production facilities. 

US Vanadium is well placed to help supply the growing VRFB market which forecast will see >30%py growth to 2027, with demand to be driven by China (although it's difficult to know where these batteries will be installed).  It's also difficult to know where the supply of high-purity vanadium and electrolyte will come from.  Although large Chinese producers such as Pangang and HBIS Chengde are likely to increase their high-purity oxide and electrolyte production, we expect China to increasingly rely on vanadium electrolyte imports (likely from Brazil, South Africa the USA and elsewhere) to meet its future requirements.