VanadiumCorp Resource Inc (TSX-V:VRB) told investors it sees a "strong case" for advancing its flagship Lac Doré vanadium-titanium-iron project in Quebec and developing, in parallel, a vanadium electrolyte manufacturing facility and has started engineering design and site selection for the latter.
The facility will be modular style and will be located near Sherbrooke in the Canadian province.
"VanadiumCorp management has assessed the supply and demand outlook for vanadium to the years 2030 and 2050. We see a strong case for advancing the Lac Doré vanadium-titanium-iron mining project and, in parallel, developing a value-added manufacturing capacity for vanadium electrolytes," the company said in a statement.
It added that developing the two projects concurrently would "maximize" the value of the deposit alongside the firm's knowledge base in Vanadium Redox Flow Batteries (VRFBs).
The company's engineering scoping defines initial vanadium electrolyte production capacity of 315,000 litres per year (provisioning about 6.3 MWh of energy storage capacity in VRFBs).
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Quality testing of Lac Doré vanadium pentoxide product will be the primary use for the facility.
VanadiumCorp also reported that work at the Lac Doré project in October to November this year had resampled historical trenches in the titanomagnetite horizons and that a large sample was available now for grinding and separation tests.
"Additional hydrometallurgical testing is planned to commence in January 2023 to test the quality of our mineral concentrates and optimize the future production of vanadium and titanium strategic metals," added the company.
The use of VRFBs for long-duration energy storage will expand dramatically as worldwide energy production shifts to renewables, according to consensus amongst industry, the International Energy Association (IEA), and a recent MIT Research Review (2022), highlighted VanadiumCorp.
Under the IEA’s Net-Zero by 2050 Roadmap, the share of power generated from renewables - mainly solar, wind and hydropower - would rise from current levels of around 10% to 60%.
In addition, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) notes that vanadium is 75% undersupplied for that 2050 Net-Zero goal.
VanadiumCorp wholly-owns two strategic vanadium, titanium, and iron properties in Quebec. The Iron T is near Matagami, and the company's flagship Lac Doré property is near Chibougamau.
It also owns 100% of a newly patented hydrometallurgical process called VEPT (the VanadiumCorp, Electrochem, Process Technology), which consists of digesting vanadiferous feedstocks into concentrated sulfuric acid, recovering vanadium, titanium, ferrous sulphate, and silica products from mineral concentrate feedstocks, such as titanomagnetite.
Contact the writer at giles@proactiveinvestors.com