By: Richard Mowat

POSTED: 08/2/11 5:16 AM FILED AS: Articles COMMENTS FEED: RSS 2.0;

Primary – vanadium mineral concentrates

Vanadium raw materials are produced on a small scale relative to the production of base metals and iron ore. Production is characterized by low grades of contained vanadium, so open-cut mining is an economic necessity. The principal deposits of vanadium are assessed as having a long life. They vary considerably, however, from deposits which are characterized by lawyers with a relatively small thickness in the magnetite zone in the Bushveld, through the approximately 200m thick intrusion at Windimurra, to the more, massive deposits at Panzhihua. Most share hard rock mining techniques with drill and blast to varying degrees, loading and hauling the ore from open-cut mines.

Sapropelic Coal (“Coalstone”) is also produced from open-cut mining as a4re carnotite uranium ores and oilsands.

Magnetite is highly magnetic, unless it has been weathered to a hematite phase, so most VTM ores are highly amenable to the magnetic separation process. Vanadium concentrates from primary production facilities are usually made from VTM ores of 0.5-1% V2O5 using a simple process consisting of crushing, screening, grinding and low intensity magnetic separation to produce concentrates typically containing 1-2% V2O5. The VTM used as raw material from iron production is often smelted without concentration.

The typical vanadium mineral concentrate flow sheet is essentially three phases consisting mining, milling and beneficiation:

Mining

Vanadiferous magnetite is open-cut minded and the coarse ore feeds a Jaw Crusher.

Milling

The crushed ore is milled to magnetite liberation size in an Autogenous (AG) or High Pressure Grinding Rolls (HPGR) Mill.

Benefication

The magnetic material is milled din a Ball Mill and the slurry is treated with magnetic separators. The magnetic product is filtered on a belt tilter to form a magnetite (VTM) concentrate stockpile.

Ore from the Mapochs mine in South Africa contains approximately 1.6% V205 and 56% Fe without concentration. The ore is smelted into crude steel from which vanadium slag is a by-product. The unsmelted ore fines are blended with a Highveld slag at Vanchem. Ironsands from New Zealand are concentrated using gravity to produce a concentrate grading about 1.3% v205 prior to vanadium extraction.. VTM ores in Sichuan (China) average 0.24% V205 and vanadium is recovered as a slag by-product of steelmaking. The concentrator at Windimurra typically produced a concentrate grade of 1.2% V205 as feed to roasting and vanadium extraction.

Vanadium ores are characteristically hard and have a high work index that results in high energy input for crushing. Ironsands are an exception and require no drill and blast and little if any, crushing because mining is carried out by suction dredge.

Researchers at the University of Kunming have developed a form of pressure acid leaching for use in extracting vanadium from coal stone (black carbonaceous shale).

Co-production

When a VTM iron ore is used to produce iron, the vanadium reports in the crude steel. It must normally be extracted from crude steel before the production of the finished steel, whether or not the finished steel will contain vanadium.

A vanadium extraction step is added to the steelmaking process of the co-producer and results in a vanadiferous slag of approximately 10-22% V205. Slag produced at Highveld is typically in the 20-22% V205 range, slag’s from Evraz’s Nizhny Tagil are 12-18% while the slags from major Chinese co-producers like Panzhihua and Chengde are thought to be 10-`5% V205.

Some vanadium co-producers use unconventional process flow sheets for producing the iron, while others attempt to minimize the impact of high-titanium content threw blending with conventional, low-titanium iron ores. Highveld is an example of the former and uses rotary kilns and electric furnaces, while Panzhihua is an example of the latter.

Vanadium slags are produced during the steelmaking using scrap steel, lime and oxidation of the vanadium. The Highveld steel operation uses a process called “shacking ladle” to oxidise the vanadium using a lance to extract the vanadiferous slag from the crude steel. Other co-producers use more conventional furnaces to oxidize the vanadium into slag.

The granulated slag is used as raw material for vanadium production. The Highveld slag is used as raw material for the nearby Vanchem operation at Treibacher in Austria. Slag from the steelworks at Panzhihua is processed in a nearby vanadium extraction facility. Other significant examples of vanadium slag production include Nizhny Tagil (NTMK) steelworks in Russia (owned by the Evraz Group) and the Chengde steelworks in Hebei, China (part of the Tangshan Group).

The below vanadium slag production flow sheet at Panzhihua shows the process for the vandiferous iron ore into a vandiferous slag that forms the raw material for vanadium extraction.

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Vanadium Slag Production Flow Sheet

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