In the world, the production cost of vanadium metal is high, and the output is very small. In addition to a few special USES, the use form of vanadium in industry is mainly vanadium pentoxide (V2O5) and ferrovanadium FeV. About 90% of vanadium in China is used in the iron and steel industry. Vanadium is mainly used in steel to improve its strength and toughness by adding vanadium. Adding 1% vanadium into structural steel can increase strength by 10%~20%, reduce structural weight by 15%~25%, and reduce cost by 8%~10%. High strength vanadium steel can reduce the weight of metal structure by 40% to 50%, and the cost is 15% to 30% lower than ordinary structural steel. In steel, for example, our country is still in extensive use of Ⅱ reinforcement, Ⅲ level high strength reinforced the proportion is only 10%. The left and right sides. And international steel grade is 460 mpa Ⅲ steel, Europe has been using steel of 500 mpa. Vanadium steel is widely used in the construction of oil (gas) pipelines, buildings, Bridges, rails and pressure vessels due to its high strength, toughness, wear resistance and corrosion resistance.
Vanadium and titanium constitute an important metal alloy Ti-6A1-4V, which is used in aircraft engines, aerospace cabin skeletons, missiles, hydrofoils and introducers of warships, steam turbine blades, rocket engine housings and so on. In addition, vanadium alloys are also used in magnetic materials, hard alloys, superconducting materials (such as V3Ga) and nuclear reactor materials.
Vanadium is used as the positive electrode in batteries in the form of vanadium oxide, such as V2O5 and V6O13 used as the positive electrode in lithium batteries. The advantages of vanadium battery are that it can be used safely at room temperature, the service life of electrolyte and battery is long, and the manufacturing cost is low. If the vanadium battery can be promoted in the future, it will be another vanadium metal demand growth pole.
