VanadiumCorp Resource Inc (TSX-V:VRB) announced that India’s patent office has issued a patent for its hydrometallurgical processes aimed at recovering vanadium and iron values from vanadiferous titanomagnetite and vanadiferous feedstocks.
The patent pertains to the Vanadiumcorp-Electrochem Process Technology (VEPT), developed by electrochemist Dr Francois Cardarelli, and now wholly owned by VanadiumCorp.
VEPT is now patented in the US, South Africa, Australia, and India, with patent applications pending solely in the EU and Canada. Additionally, VanadiumCorp has submitted a Continuation Patent in the US encompassing broader claims.
The Indian patent's term extends for 20 years from February 21, 2018.
Paul McGuigan, CEO of VanadiumCorp, expressed his satisfaction with the recent developments. "We are pleased to be granted a patent for our VEPT process lately in Australia and now India.”
McGuigan noted that Australia has rich vanadium mineral resources and robust mine development activity, while India has significant vanadiferous feedstocks, such as refinery wastes and fly-ash.
“With these two additions to our patent-protected sphere, VanadiumCorp can protect its developing know-how in extracting vanadium from primary mineral concentrates, fly ash and the slags from electric arc furnaces,” the CEO added.
The VEPT process involves digesting vanadiferous titanomagnetite magnetite and other feedstocks into concentrated sulfuric acid, significantly reducing energy consumption compared to conventional pyrometallurgical processes for vanadium extraction. Subsequently, through electrochemical reduction of the pregnant solution, the VEPT process retrieves ferrous sulfate heptahydrate, titanium hydrolysate, and vanadyl sulfate. Vanadyl sulfate serves as a precursor for the preparation of vanadium electrolytes utilized in vanadium flow batteries (VFBs), or various vanadium chemicals employed in lithium-ion and vanadium-ion batteries.