3.6.2.1 Present State of Production   

South Africa, Russia, China and other countries (excluding the US, Australia, Brazil and Finland of which the data are not available) produced a total of 33,900 tons of metal vanadium in 1994 and a total of 35,000 tons of the same material in 1995. The production of them was similar in 1997 and 1998; South Africa's production was the highest, being 17,000 tons and 16,000 tons in 1997 and 1998, respectively; and China produced 8,000 and 7,000 tons in the two years, respectively.   

Major producers of vanadium products in the world, such as South Africa, the former Soviet Union, China and Finland, all use the method of extracting vanadium from V-Ti-magnetite ore in the process of iron smelting, producing about 70,000 tons of vanadium each year. The US recovers vanadium from carnolite and barringerite; Canada, Italy, Mexico, etc. extract it from the dust derived from burning of petroleum coke; and a few other countries take out vanadium from stone coal. In recent years, some countries such as Kuwait have recovered vanadium from oil residue and waste catalysts, and their recovered quantity of the metal has been on the increase.

In the 1950s~1960s China's production of vanadium was restricted because the mining and utilization of vanadium was confined to small stone coal deposits in the south of the country. Massive production in China began with the mining of the Panzhihua V-Ti-magnetite deposit; and iron mining brought along the exploitation and utilization of vanadium ore. Since 1974 when the vanadium atomization technique was used for the first time in the production in China, there has been a fundamental change in the country's situation of vanadium production.

In the last few years, China has annually produced about 50,000~100,000 tons of vanadium slags (Table 3.6.4). As shown in the table, the production has had a tendency to decline in recent years, mainly because of the drastic decrease in the V2O5 price on the international market since the late 1980s. According to the Yearbook of Chemical Industry in China (1995~1996), the country produced 1,284 tons of V2O5 in 1993 and 603 tons in 1994. As reported by the Yearbook of the Iron and Steel Industry in China(1997), the Panzhihua Iron and Steel Co. produced 83,300 tons of vanadium slags and 2,100 tons of V2O5 in the year 1996; the Chengde Iron and Steel Co. produced 23,000 tons of vanadium slags. The output of other vanadium products such as low-V alloy steel increased year by year: 245,000 tons in 1985, 364,000 tons in 1989, and 529,000 tons in 1991.

Table 3.6.4 Output of major vanadium products in China in 1988~1991

¢Ù The original figure is like this. It is also reported that in 1989, the Panzhihua Iron and Steel Co. produced 75,000 tons of vanadium slags and the whole country, about 100,000 tons.

From 1970 to the end of 1991, the Panzhihua Metallurgical and Mining Co. mined 139.61 million tons of iron ores, and produced 60.61 million tons of vanadium-iron concentrates, 29.01 million tons of iron and 22.01 million tons of steel. Since 1974 when the multipurpose utilization of vanadium resources by means of atomization in the process of iron smelting started, the company has produced 734,000 tons of vanadium slags, and thus become the main producer of the slags in China. This rapidly put an end to the situation that China relied on imports for its vanadium supply, making the country one of the world's leading producers of vanadium. A foreign analysis indicates that China's production of vanadium products (calculated based on V2O5) makes up 13% of the world's total.   

China's experimental study on the extraction of vanadium from stone coal started in the early 1960s. The production has fluctuated with the vanadium price on the international market. When the price tended to rise in the 1970s, there occurred a craze of extracting vanadium from stone coal in many provinces of southern China, resulting in the establishment of nearly 100 small plants or mines using local methods to extract the metal. These plants or mines produced crude and a little refined vanadium (V2O5 >98%) and exported part of the production. In the early 1980s when the price declined, the plants or mines closed down one after another, except a few small ones in Hunan, Hebei and Zhejiang that maintained the production on a small scale. At that time the annual productive capacity was about 700 tons and the annual production, only about 400 tons. In 1986, the international vanadium price rose again, and the supply and sales situation tended to improve. As a result, the small plants or mines were revitalized, the mining of stone coal restored in various parts of the country and small facilities for extracting vanadium from the coal reconstructed or built. In the early 1990s, China had 26 such plants or mines possessing a total annual productive capacity of about 2,800 tons and producing about 700 tons of V2O5 each year (which accounts for 18% of the country's total).   

3.6.2.2 Distribution of Production   

At present, major enterprises recovering vanadium from iron ores in China are the Panzhihua, the Chengde and the Ma'anshan iron and steel companies as well as some iron alloy plants in Shanghai, Nanjing, Jinzhou and Emei, which are carrying out regular production on a large scale. Since 1978 when the vanadium atomization technique was put into operation, the Panzhihua Iron and Steel Co. has been the most important producer of vanadium ores and products in China. The Panzhihua iron mine is the earliest exploited and largest mine in China among the numerous V-Ti-magnetite deposits in the Panzhihua-Xichang region. The ore dressing plant of the mine can annually process 13.50 million tons of ore. The crude ore is crushed to 25~0mm of which 90% is in the range of 20~0mm; the grain sizes of the single-stage grinding are 0.4~0.0mm. The degree of liberation of useful mineral is 85%. After being dressed by magnetic separation, cleaning and scavenging, the V-Ti-Fe concentrate contains 0.5£¥~0.6% of V2O5, and the dressing recovery of vanadium is 80%. When the V-Fe concentrate is smelted for pig iron in furnace, 80% of the vanadium is reduced to enter into the pig iron. If the atomization technique is used to extract the vanadium, the rate of recovering vanadium from the molten iron in the furnace can reach 70%. The common recovery of vanadium is about 40%, and 86,000~89,000 tons of vanadium slags containing 15%~18% V2O5 can be produced each year.   

Vanadium production from other sources (including the extraction from stone coal and the multipurpose utilization of vanadium of volcanic iron deposits) in China is little. Except in Zhejiang, Hunan and Hebei where the extraction of vanadium from stone coal has been in normal operation, the extraction has experienced two strong fluctuations during the past 20 years, indicating that the small-scale production by township enterprises using local methods has been greatly affected by the market. The present producers are mainly the Huacun stone coal mine in Kaihua, Zhejiang, the Dafeng vanadium mine in Shanglin County, Guangxi, and the Xinkaitang vanadium mine in Yueyang, Hunan. The Huacun stone coal mine, which exploited the coal as early as the end of the Qing Dynasty (1644~1911), began the multipurpose utilization of the coal (for generating power and extracting vanadium) in 1976; and now can produce 60,000~70,000 tons of stone coal annually, which contains 0.39~0.53% V2O5. In 1991, the mine generated electricity by merging into a grid system, and now is producing 150 tons of V2O5 each year. The Dafeng vanadium mine, of which the ore contains 1.096% V2O5, started operation in 1989, and has a designed annual productive capacity of 50,000 tons. The Xinkaitang vanadium mine, of which the ore bed is great in thickness, high in grade (4.79% V2O5) and large in reserve (1.9395 million tons), is a large deposit bearing multiple elements such as V, U, Ag and Cd. This mine, now being exploited on a small scale, is extracting vanadium and producing refined vanadium (grading over 99% V2O5) for export.