Going with the flowOPEN a toolbox,pull out a spanner and you may be holding a bit of the answer to global warming: vanadium, a metal named after Vanadis, and the Scandinavian goddess of beauty. Used mostly in alloys to strengthen steel,its appearance may not live up to the romance of its name. Yet vanadium could become a vital ingredient in large clean-energy batteries, in which case it will shine a lot brighter.
Its price has already been rising faster than cobalt, and copper and nickel,all of which are used in lithium-ion batteries (see chart). The main reason for the run-up is prosaic. approximately nine-tenths of the world’s vanadium is used to harden steel; China has tightened standards on the strength of rebar to execute buildings more earthquake-proof. price Smith, boss of Largo Resources, and which mines tall-purity vanadium in Brazil,says this alone should increase demand for the metal by up to 15000 tonnes in 2018-19. Last year total production was 83000 tonnes.
But...
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Source: economist.com