AVL wins $3.69m grant for vanadium battery manufacturing

Australian Vanadium plans to design, build and operate a local vanadium battery electrolyte plant have received a boost after it secured a competitive government grant.

The $3.69m in matched funding from the Resources Technology and Critical Minerals Processing National Manufacturing Priority Grant will be used to support the company’s plan to include a high-purity processing circuit to produce battery, chemical and master-alloy grade vanadium pentoxide as part of its namesake project.

It will also support its plans to build and operate a commercial vanadium electrolyte plant in Western Australia that will support the rollout of vanadium redox flow batteries and the manufacture of prototype and demonstration residential and standalone power systems.

Australian Vanadium (ASX:AVL) managing director Vincent Algar says the grant will enable the company to add further value to the vanadium products that it plans to produce in Australia.

“The grant will provide support to AVL to achieve production of high-purity vanadium pentoxide, which is a key input to vanadium-titanium master alloys for critical steel applications and vanadium electrolyte for batteries,” he explained.

“In turn this will assist development of the project, with the company now in discussion with offtakers for vanadium electrolyte in addition to vanadium pentoxide.”

“The grant will allow AVL to produce vanadium electrolyte commercially to support the development of the long duration energy storage market, which will play a key role in future grid stability in this renewable energy generation era.”

Algar added that as VRFB battery systems are easier to manufacture than other batteries, as they use only vanadium to store energy. That makes them ideal for accelerating battery manufacturing in Australia, using locally produced vanadium and other battery components.

Vanadium Redox Flow Batteries

VRFBs use four different vanadium oxidation states in liquid vanadium electrolyte to store chemical potential energy.

Increasing the volume of electrolyte allows more energy to be stored with the electrolyte forming 30% to 60% of the cost of the battery, depending on how many hours of storage are required.

They are ideal for providing a long-duration energy stage and are also considered to be safer than lithium-ion batteries.

Australian Vanadium has pushed its vertical integration strategy for the battery market since launching VSUN Energy in 2016 to focus on the development of the battery application of vanadium in Australia.

While the steel market currently consumes most of the world’s vanadium production, a secondary market for battery applications will create significant new demand and help to develop price stability.

This article was developed in collaboration with Australian Vanadium, a Stockhead advertiser at the time of publishing.

This article does not constitute financial product advice. You should consider obtaining independent advice before making any financial decisions.