Alum shale, page-6

"Ninety-five percent of vanadium deposits worldwide are magnetite-hosted, meaning that the vanadium is bonded with magnetic metals, such as iron and titanium, and commonly occur as thinly layered deposits. Magnetite-hosted vanadium deposits are well suited for the steel market, where vanadium is produced into ferrovanadium, the form in which steel producers buy vanadium in order to combine it with steel to make high-strength metal alloys. Just 2 pounds of vanadium added to a tonne of steel will double its strength.

What makes the Green Giant Vanadium Project particularly unique among the majority of vanadium deposits in the world is the fact that it is a sediment-hosted deposit. Since about only five percent of vanadium occurrences occur in sediments, the Green Giant Project is a rare type of vanadium deposit.

Being sediment-hosted, no magnetic metals are associated with Green Giant’s vanadium and this makes it ideally suited to produce high-purity vanadium pentoxide (V2O5), which is a key precursor material required to produce the liquid electrolyte that powers a vanadium redox battery (VRB). The VRB is currently recognized as a leading, large-scale energy storage system technology for the harnessing of coal-powered and renewable energy and as such, is forecasted by industry analysts to have high future demand growth.

Since high-purity V2O5 is essential in producing the clean electrolyte (99.5%) needed in VRBs, magnetite-hosted vanadium deposits are not well suited for VRB applications. This is because they contain impurities not found in sediment-hosted deposits and the impurities, which must be removed, are costly to extract."