By: Richard Mowat

POSTED: 05/28/11 10:02 PM FILED AS: Articles, Batteries, Vanadium Redox Batteries COMMENTS FEED: RSS 2.0;

Vanadium Redox & Pentoxide Batteries

Solar and wind farms have the makings of energy crisis liberators. There’s only one problem: where do you store all the energy? The immense amount of energy produced by these farms during peak hours is far beyond what’s actually needed down the line, but then we hear how few cities they could actually power due to storage limitations. The current reality doesn’t match the potential. This is where vanadium redox batteries comes into play.

At night or when the sun isn’t shining, solar power cannot be harnessed, you actually use energy all nigh. Energy created by wind turbines is lost when the wind ceases. Vanadium pentoxide batteries can store vast amounts of energy produced during peak hours and allocate it during non-peak hours.

When used as a battery component, vanadium has its ability to supercharge batteries of any size from a few pounds to massive house size storage units. From giant vanadium redox flow batteries (VRBs) housed in substations powering large-scale grids to vanadium pentoxide batteries in electric cars. Given their immense energy storage capacity, vanadium pentoxide batteries stand to revolutionize electric vicheacles, making them user friendly and creating widespread market acceptance as technology progresses.. Vanadium pentoxide batteries can store a charge translating to 372 miles of travel, a distance ranging anywhere from three to seven times greater than that provided by a single “traditional” lithium-ion battery. Not only is the charge capacity greater, but vanadium pentoxide batteries can be recharged in less than 55 minutes, compared to as much as 10 hours for lithium-ion batteries.

What is Vanadium v2o5 Anyway?

Vanadium is new to the average joe and most investors, brokers, financial advisors etc, but its actually old school: just too good for the public, more of a military thing at the early development stages in the early 1970′s threw till now. Discovered in the early 1800s, vanadium is a malleable, silvery grey “strategic” transition metal found in a number of minerals such as vanadite and patronite. It can also be commercially obtained as a byproduct of iron manufacturing when slag and fly ash are purified. Its potential use in batteries and massive energy cells could boost demand, but this transition metal already serves a very crucial role in industries like aerospace with ultra strong super light vanadium metal . Vanadium foil is used to join or bond steel and titanium, creating advances in light-weight high-strength aircraft.

Are Vanadium BatteriesViable?

New super-charged vanadium pentoxide batteries sound too good to be true, but investment from governments like the United States and others around the world as well as many large corporations are already moving forward with this technology which proves its importance in green renewable energy from my point of view. A Chinese car manufacture has begun developing vanadium pentoxide batteries for its new electric cars. Subaru uses vanadium rite now to supercharge their lithium-ion batteries., doubling the driving range offered by traditional li-ion batteries. Vanadium pentoxide batteries will revolutionalize this market now.

What’s the Catch with this whole Vanadium thing anayway?

The major limitation to the vanadium battery revolution is the scarcity of vanadium deposits around the world, with demand rising we need to get production in North America by 2013 at the latest. Russia, South Africa, and China are some of the only major exporters. South Africa doesnt have enough energy to run their mine at full potential, China wont give us any, And Russia doesnt produce as much as they should either. We currently rely on others for vanadium which is not a good thing. Thats why investing in north american vanadium companies is a wise choice going forward into the next few years. Not only will vanadium’s use in new green technologies require increased production, but exploding economies and major attrition growth around the world will continue to demand vanadium for its traditional use in strengthening steel alloys. The United States currently gets its vanadium as a by-product from very expensive extraction processing, or from overseas exporters. American Vanadium Corp and Apella Resources are working to offer low-cost vanadium products from mining shallow vanadium ore deposits within the U.S. and keep importing on an as needed basis.

As vanadium demand continues to increase in the future, well have to learn more about the environmental consequence of vanadium mining. If the United States and other countries can establish a steady supply of vanadium and we keep advancing our technology, vanadium batteries will revolutionize sustainability, making reliable large-scale renewable energy sources a way to decrease the use of fossil fules.

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