King River kicks goal with new vanadium process
Date: Jun 27, 2018
King River Copper’s first trial of a new process to extract vanadium from its giant Speewah deposit in the East Kimberley has delivered some very encouraging results and boosted the potential for the production of high-value vanadium electrolytes.
In an update to the ASX yesterday on the company’s hydrometallurgical testwork as part of a concept study on Speewah, King River reported its first attempt using the ammonium metavanadate or “AMV” process had produced vanadium pentoxide with a purity of 99.47%.
This is just below the threshold for high purity vanadium pentoxide of between 99.5-99.9% and almost matches the 99.48% purity achieved by previous tests using the direct hydrous route.
The AMV process is the current focus of testwork conducted by TSW Analytical because King River believes that high purity vanadium pentoxide produced via this process can be more readily upgraded into electrolytes for vanadium redox batteries.
Vanadium redox flow batteries are a rapidly emerging technology with a number of advantages over lithium ion batteries, particularly in large, grid-scale electricity storage to balance the intermittent ebbs and flows of wind and solar-power generators.
