Charles Jillings, CEO of Utilico, energized by strong economic momentum across Latin America. Watch the video here.
Zero Hedge's headline is misleading. The reported events happened months ago.
@SloppyGuiseppe: Could you supply a refererence to show that railway steel contains vanadium?
Apologies if this has been posted already. Read beyond the headline, and look at the graphs in particular. The article doesn't take into account the potential impact of vanadium leasing.
https://www.theassay.com/technology-metals-edition-insight/ebb-and-flow-high-vanadium-prices-hinder-the-spread-of-redox-flow-batteries/?dm_i=2UAF,T6DN,5A4QGU,30CNN,1
NervousEggBasket: Publishers of research reports on companies have a delicate path to tread. If they don't say enough nice things about a company, they risk losing a paying client. On the other hand, if they are seen to be puffing up a (client) company too much, then they risk losing their reputation for independence and objectivity.
The video you refer to was about the vanadium market in general. John Meyer, appropriately, mentioned some leading vanadium-focused companies. It would not have been appropriate, in the context, to single out Bushveld as a great buy. However, he did go to the trouble of excusing the latest glitch in production as due to transient "issues".
Your pen-name sugests that you are well aware of the hazard of putting all your eggs in one basket. This applies particularly to junior mining companies. Nearly all the posters on this site are big fans of the company (as I am) and will not mention, or tolerate others mentioning, the risks involved. Read everything you can and try to build up a balanced view.
Expert10201: Metal prices are volatile and unpredictable, but somewhat tend to regress to their long-term averages. So mining analysts typically discount prices that have recently risen sharply in making their projections. John Meyer prepared the market, in his recent interview with IG, for making an exception to this rule in the present case of vanadium. Even so, he has compromised and not gone the whole hog by projecting the full present price to plateau permanently. This is reasonable, because over time there are usually negative feedbacks in response to extreme prices, some of which we may not be able to foresee. This partly regressed target price for vanadium is still considerably higher than the previous one, leading to much fatter predicted profit margins for Vametco and hence for Bushveld Minerals.
John Meyer is used to seeing mean-reversion in metal prices. But he's finding it hard to see the mechanism for it in the present case of vanadium:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wR0lfom0jaI
Killerpidgeon, could you give us a link, please?
In case no-one has posted it here already:
http://www.theassay.com/articles/vanadium-outstanding-resource-performer-of-the-past-12-months/
Alphacomp: You are right to criticise Kwabi et al.'s reference to " low earth abundance of vanadium". Crustal abundance is pretty much irrelevant here: for example, vanadium is about 700 times as common as antimony and costs about 10 times as much. That aside, in the present case, the authors estimate that "at $50/kWh, the total capital cost of these electrolytes** stands at less than one-third of the cost of an all-vanadium electrolyte, for which the vanadium alone is currently priced at $160/kWh".
I have now found the data for round-trip energy efficiency in the paper, not in the text but in Fig. 3D on page 7. At a membrane current loading of 500 A/m², the efficiency is ~87%, dropping to ~65% at 1500 A/m².
Apart from the howler about elemental abundance, it looks like a pretty serious piece of work to me—albeit, as a paper on applied electrochemistry with a focus on electrolyte degradation rate, unsuited to Physical Review Letters.
** 4,4'-((9,10-anthraquinone-2,6-diyl)dioxy)dibutyrate and potassium ferrocyanide
Alphacomp: I recommend reading the report by Kwabi et al. on the alkaline-quinone redox flow battery, using anthroquinone wih ether-linked carboxylic substitutions, which is accessible via the link posted by smokedodger. It addresses some of the main issues here: in particular, cost and degradation rate of the electrolyte and membrane. However, it does not quote a number for the round-trip energy efficiency of the cell. (I am not able to judge whether that can be estimated from the numbers it does provide.) If the efficiency is reasonable, then the technology must be viewed as a potential competitor to the VRFB.
Alphacomp (Sun 12:15) 6 km² = 4000 × 1500 m² .
This page is in Korean. Is there an English version anywhere?
When I clicked on the link provided by maccas21, I got an FT article about a dozen metals, but vanadium was not mentioned.
Can anyone explain why US ferrovanadium is 11.5% more expensive than the European product, as calculated from the mid-range prices given at https://www.vanadiumprice.com/international-fev-prices-started-falling/ ?