An EIT RawMaterials-supported vanadium recovery joint venture in Finland between two Australian project development companies—Critical Metals Ltd and Neometals Ltd—plans to increase high-purity vanadium production in Europe for use in grid-scale vanadium redox flow batteries (VRFBs), specialty steel applications and next-generation lithium vanadium cells.

The Vanadium Recovery Project (VRP) is targeting a 1.5 million tonne reduction of CO₂ emissions to the atmosphere over 10 years compared to conventional mining. The VRP won’t have any waste streams and will set a new precedent for circular economy practices in metals processing.

Critical has executed a 10-year slag supply agreement with Scandinavian steel giant SSAB to access approximately 2Mt of stockpiled high-grade vanadium-bearing Slag from three operating steel mills. Neometals has extensive experience in the metallurgical processing of vanadium-bearing concentrates from its Barrambie Titanium-Vanadium project and has, through a wholly owned subsidiary Avanti Materials Ltd, developed a proprietary hydrometallurgical flowsheet suitable for recovering vanadium from the slag.

The flowsheet utilizes conventional equipment and is subject to provisional patent applications, tailored to recover high-purity vanadium chemicals from slag. Extensive due-diligence test-work completed by Neometals’ chosen metallurgical contractor on multiple SSAB Slag samples has confirmed up to 80% vanadium recovery from leaching under mild conditions at atmospheric pressure.

The hydrometallurgical leaching process path has significant operational, cost and risk advantages over the traditional pyrometallurgical (salt-roast) process route.

This positions Critical Metals and Neometals on the cusp of becoming major producer of vanadium in Europe late in 2024.

Vanadium is a critical raw material according to the European Commission and features superior energy density compared to other battery materials. It is becoming recognized as a significant addition to new lithium-ion chemistries used in electric vehicles as well as in VRFBs used for long duration energy storage solutions from renewable sources. Currently, approximately 75% of global vanadium supply is sourced from China, South Africa, and Russia.

We believe that in the next 10 years vanadium will be the ‘new lithium’. We see a lot of parallels on where the vanadium industry is now versus where the lithium industry was 10 years ago. We are happy that EIT RawMaterials agrees with this assessment and continues to support us in driving this project rapidly forward.

—Darren Townsend, Chief Development Officer at Neometals

Neometals is Critical Metals’ largest shareholder and holds 15.4% of its issued capital.