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https://www.energy-storage.news/news/largo-says-vanadium-for-energy-storage-worth-twice-as-much-as-steel-product

Using vanadium for battery electrolytes could be twice as profitable as supplying it for steel production, which is currently the major industrial use for the abundant metal, vanadium producer Largo Resources has said.

Largo Resources has decided that the market for long-duration energy storage will be a high value opportunity and held a ‘Battery Day’ this week to highlight its strategies for entering the global vanadium redox flow battery (VRFB) energy storage business.

At the end of last year, the company launched a subsidiary, Largo Clean Energy, which will enable it to take vanadium from the parent company’s mining operations in Brazil and use it for VCHARGE±, the VRFB product which it has developed since acquiring technology, IP and personnel from defunct US VRFB company VIONX.

With the ongoing trend of variable renewable energy’s share of the energy mix increasing and fossil fuels in decline, the company believes it could capture around 3% of the global market for long-duration energy storage. VRFBs can store energy for 4 - 12 hours, much longer than the typical 1 - 4 hour applications lithium-ion batteries are economically viable at doing today, Largo’s in-house analysis forecasted the total addressable market to be around 49,000MWh by 2025.

It expects to make 40MWh of deployments in 2022 and then scale up production to 180MW / 1,400MWh annual capacity by 2025 to meet that market share target. At Wednesday’s online presentation event, VP of operations Salvatore Minopoli said that Largo Clean Energy is based out of Massachusetts, US, with manufacturing in Massachusetts and New Hampshire, and with sales offices in Washington DC.

According to Minopoli and other company executives, Largo’s advantages include having a proven, commercially available technology, access to vanadium and in-house manufacturing capabilities. Ian Robertson, a director at the company, said that so much demand is expected from the battery market that the major factors that could limit Largo from achieving its targets would be manufacturing capacity and how much vanadium it can produce.

Currently, as a producer of vanadium, it has sold the commodity vanadium pentoxide (V2O5) as an additive for steel manufacturing at an average price of US$7.75 per pound. It believes that in the energy storage business that same V2O5 would be worth US$12.39.

Rival vanadium battery company Invinity Energy Systems has launched a business model where the vanadium electrolyte in a flow battery system is rented to the end user, lowering the upfront capital cost. Unlike the electrolyte in a lithium-ion battery, the vanadium does not degrade even after decades of use and retains its value.

https://www.ft.com/content/c52a1cf1-d3e7-4291-b08f-9b44b520367d

Wastewater analysis contributing to detection of Covid variants in England, government says
George Steer

Flushing the toilet after use has never been so important. Since last year, scientists in England have been scanning sewage samples for fragments of the Sars-CoV-2 virus, using the data to detect spikes of new cases and the prevalence of variants of concern.

More than 70 per cent of the population are contributing to the effort, findings from which are “shared with local and national decision makers... to stop further transmission”, the department of health said on Thursday.

The programme is being led by the Joint Biosecurity Centre, with samples taken from manholes in the street, which generally serve a local area, and at sewage treatment works, which serve wider areas such as a city or town.

However odious, wastewater surveillance “compliments other testing programmes and public health actions”, the department of health said, and “has the benefit of detecting the virus in asymptomatic individuals”.

Andrew Singer of the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology said in October that because the virus’s genetic material can be detected in wastewater “ahead of local hospital admissions... wastewater could effectively become the ‘canary in the coal mine’ for Covid-19”.

Analysis of wastewater is “low-cost, anonymous and immediate”, added Barbara Kasprzyk-Hordern of the University of Bath.

https://m.in-en.com/article/html/energy-2304971.shtml

Graphene electrode materials for large-scale energy storage vanadium batteries come out

On June 9th, it was learned from Changsha University of Science and Technology that the team of Professor Ding Mei and Jia Chuankun of the school has independently developed and designed the world's first large-scale growth equipment for flow battery electrode materials, and developed a large-scale growth equipment. Graphene composite electrode materials for large-scale energy storage vanadium batteries can significantly improve the power density, energy efficiency and cycle life of vanadium batteries, and effectively reduce the cost of vanadium batteries. This technology is expected to provide new ideas for the development of commercial electrodes for large-scale energy storage flow batteries. The related results were published in the famous academic journal "Nano Research" in my country on June 7.

In order to achieve the carbon peak by 2030 and the goal of carbon neutrality by 2060 as scheduled, the development and utilization of new energy sources such as solar energy and wind energy have become research hotspots. However, new energy power generation has problems such as instability and discontinuity, and there is an urgent need to develop advanced large-scale energy storage devices and technologies. Flow battery has become one of the most potential large-scale energy storage technologies due to its advantages such as long cycle life, safety and reliability, fast and deep charging and discharging. However, the most mature vanadium flow battery currently developed still has the commercial bottleneck of high cost and low battery energy density.

Ding Mei introduced that the electrode material is a decisive factor in the cost of vanadium battery power module and battery conversion efficiency. Graphite felt or carbon felt electrode materials commonly used in this type of battery have disadvantages such as low specific surface area and poor catalytic performance, which seriously affect the power, efficiency and service life of the battery.

The latest large-size graphene composite electrode independently developed by the team can effectively improve the specific surface area of ??the electrode and its catalytic performance for the oxidation-reduction reaction of vanadium ions. Experimental data shows that the power density of the vanadium battery assembled with the graphene composite electrode can be increased by more than 80% compared with the original electrode material, and it also exhibits superior cycle stability. At present, this achievement has completed the transformation of patented technology and entered the stage of commercial application incubation and pilot test.

EMEC has therefore partnered with Invinity Energy Systems, supported by the Scottish Government, to deploy a 1.8MWh vanadium flow battery (VFB) to ‘smooth’ tidal generation and create continuous, on-demand electricity to generate hydrogen.

Vanadium flow batteries are a form of heavy-duty, stationary energy storage that are ideal for high-utilisation, industrial settings. They provide hours of continuous power, one or more times per day, through decades of service. Most importantly for EMEC, they suffer no degradation of their performance based on the number of charge and discharge cycles they complete. This makes them the perfect candidate for balancing tidal energy’s cyclical generation patterns.

At EMEC, the flow battery system will store electricity generated by tidal turbines while the tides are flowing, and discharge power at slack tide when the turbines are less active to deliver consistent power to EMEC’s electrolyser. This will optimise hydrogen production at the site to enable tonnes of green hydrogen generation each year.

The projected operation of the battery is shown in the graph (right), which models the total number of cycles per month that the battery is expected to deliver at the EMEC site. It particularly highlights the heavy-duty nature of the application with over 100 deep charge/discharge cycles per month regularly required, a level of utilisation that would quickly accelerate a lithium-ion battery towards end-of-life degradation levels, not to mention likely contravening the manufacturer’s warranty conditions!

Are vanadium flow batteries the missing link in the energy transition?
The potential for flow batteries goes well beyond supporting tidal power with the generation of green hydrogen, as Invinity’s batteries can support any high utilisation application.

The firm recently announced that it will be delivering Australia’s first dispatchable ‘solar power plant’ to a project in South Australia. An 8MWh VFB will be combined with a 6MWp solar array, to unlock low-cost, low-emission energy for the Australian grid.

The vanadium flow battery will charge from electricity produced by solar panels when the sun is at its peak. This electricity can then be delivered when it is most needed, in the evening when grid loads are high from consumer demand, but solar generation is no longer available.

By using vanadium flow batteries to complete this ‘time shift’, solar power becomes dispatchable, as the site will produce approximately 10GWh of solar power each year that can be deployed to the grid when it is most valuable, at any time of day or night, competing directly with conventional coal and gas generation for the first time.

These projects demonstrate that vanadium flow battery energy storage is heading to maturity, and with the market for this technology expected to exceed US$4.25 billion by 2028, flow will play a leading role in the global transition to renewable energy.

https://www.engineerlive.com/content/turning-tide-vanadium-flow-batteries

Matt Harper reveals how vanadium flow batteries unlock the potential of tidal power and green hydrogen

Generating clean energy from the rise and fall of the tide has captured the imagination of engineers for decades. The potential is huge, particularly in the UK, where it has been suggested that wave and tidal stream energy could meet up to 20% of the total electricity demand.

There has been real progress for the industry, with European tidal power recently surpassing a 60 gigawatt-hour cumulative electricity production milestone and over €45m invested in the technology in 2020.

And the best is yet to come. Many of the best project sites around the world are yet to be commercially developed, providing fertile ground for tremendous growth within the industry over the next decade.

One location that has pioneered the testing and demonstration of tidal energy technology is the European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC) in Orkney, Scotland.

Established in 2003, EMEC is the world’s leading facility for testing wave and tidal energy converters in real sea conditions. The centre offers independent, accredited grid-connected test berths for full-scale prototypes, as well as test sites for smaller scale technologies, supply chain companies, and equipment manufacturers.

However, not content with pioneering two transformative energy technologies, the Centre has since expanded activities into new sectors including green hydrogen and installed a hydrogen production plant on the island of Eday, which neighbours the tidal test site. This enables the integration of tidal power with green hydrogen production.

The commercialisation of green hydrogen is an essential step toward a 100% renewable future. Green hydrogen is created and consumed without carbon emissions and can replace fossil fuels in the power sector, as well as enabling the decarbonisation of heavy industry and transport sectors.

Vanadium flow batteries: A unique battery for a unique operation
Tidal generation is predictable yet variable, as turbines generate energy four times a day with the ebb and flow of the tide. This sinusoidal energy generation potential does not provide the continuous supply of power optimal for hydrogen production, so EMEC looked to battery energy storage to address the issue.

For a battery to effectively manage tidal generation it needs to charge and discharge up to four times a day, a duty cycle that would rapidly degrade the lithium-ion batteries that currently dominate the stationary energy storage market.

Solar-coupled energy storage projects typically require just one charge and discharge daily, so by comparison regulating tidal generation presents an extremely heavy duty cycle for a battery system.

In terms of stock selection process, the managers combine macro and fundamental research to identify 'best in class' companies across subsectors.

The process largely begins from a top-down basis, however, with the managers initially focusing on three key themes: oceans and water systems; land, food and forestry; and sustainable cities and buildings.

The fund also targets all seven of the UN's Sustainable Development Goals relating to biodiversity and ecosystem restoration.

"Where we conduct our environmental analysis, we use primary carbon waste and water data, rather than something that has already been interpreted. Then, we look at the environmental footprint," Lees explained.

"Only then, after we have conducted the macro, regulatory and thematic research, will we go bottom up."

Fugmann added: "It is a bit like cycling. If you have the wind on your back, everything feels much easier. If the wind is right in front of you, it is hard work.

"The starting point is to focus on the themes that desperately need solving, then once you have that tailwind, it is all about figuring out which companies offer superior environmental benefits and financial returns over time."

https://www.investmentweek.co.uk/news/4032355/bnp-paribas-launches-ecosystem-restoration-fund

BNP Paribas Asset Management (BNPP AM) has launched an Ecosystem Restoration fund, which invests in companies proactively trying to improve biodiversity and restore oceans, lands and communities to avoid significant economic loss.
The Luxembourg-domiciled SICAV, which will be seeded with an initial €100m, comes almost exactly ten years after the firm launched its Energy Transition fund, which was seeded with the same amount of capital and has already reached €3.1bn in assets under management.

"These products can grow very quickly," co-manager of both funds Ulrik Fugmann told Investment Week.

"Investors really understand the potential returns that one can get by supporting companies that are at the forefront of making urgently-needed changes - in this instance, restoring our ecosystems.

"We are going to see about $22trn of cumulative investment into ecosystems over the next decade."

There were push factors as well as pull factors when it came to deciding to launch the fund, according to co-manager Edward Lees.

"Half of the world's GDP is dependent on natural capital and our consumption of it is taking place 1.7 times as fast as the earth can regenerate it, while global population growth and rising incomes are leading to increased demand, which adds up to an urgent need to restore damaged ecosystems," he pointed out.

Fugmann and Lees, who also oversee BNPP AM's long/short Environmental Absolute Return Thematic Equity (EARTH) fund, will hold between 40 and 60 stocks within the new mandate, which will have been chosen from an investable universe of 1,000 companies across the globe that are focused on aquatic, terrestrial and urban ecosystem restoration.

While the fund is relatively concentrated, the managers will have a keen focus on ensuring the portfolio is diversified by geography, sector and market cap.

"It was important for us to have a spread across market capitalisations, because we feel we can have a really substantial impact as public market investors when we go down the cap spectrum," Fugmann explained.

"We also believe those are areas that can be a phenomenal resource of return for investors, because they become much more a pure play on solving certain issues.

"Approximately 50% of the portfolio is in large caps, while around 30% is in mid caps, and the rest in small caps."

The managers added they adopt a similar focus on geographic diversification, which they said is a differentiator between the BNPP AM Ecosystem Restoration fund and others focused on biodiversity.

"With Ed being from the US, I think there is a natural inclination for him to look a little bit more that way," Fugmann continued.

"For me, being Danish and sitting in an office in London, I tend to look a bit more towards Europe. But we are very interested in opportunities elsewhere - such as Asia - as well."

https://www.proactiveinvestors.co.uk/companies/news/951195/today-s-market-view---altus-strategies-gem-diamonds-goldstone-resources-and-more-951195.html

Vanadium - Momentum continues to build in vanadium market, with prices up over 50% year-to-date
Vanadium prices continue to rise with European Ferro-Vanadium prices have risen nearly 53% YTD to $8.25/lb (Asia Metal).
China has turned into an importer of vanadium in recent months reducing the downward pressure caused in European prices last year by Chinese exports
Increasing capacity utilisation in European, US and Chinese steel mills is being seen as construction projects move from excavation and concrete foundations to using more structural steel for above ground construction.
Wobbly skyscrapers as seen in Shenzhen serve to remind the authorities of the importance of build quality and the materials used in construction.
While a certain amount of wobble is tolerable in skyscraper fast build rates and potentially sometimes lax adherence to building regulations in China makes observers wary of the potential for catastrophic collapse.

What about a nice half 2 RNS, confirming a US spin off.

More and more money being ploughed into vrfbs'.
Definitely feels as though things are hotting up (not the batteries).

https://m.cnfeol.com/Article/2251984.aspx

Good lad;

https://www.countrylife.co.uk/nature/feargal-sharkey-from-top-of-the-pops-to-crusading-for-britains-rivers-227659

Feargal Sharkey, one of the most recognisable pop voices of the 1970s and 1980s, talks to Country Life about his life, his passion for fishing, and how campaigning for clean rivers has become an obsession....

As a first step in reducing the country’s emissions, the commission will meet on June 4 to make a recommendation on whether it supports the environment ministry’s proposed greenhouse gas reduction targets, known as nationally determined contributions, for 2025 and 2030.

The proposal, to be submitted ahead of the United Nations Climate Change Conference to be held in the UK in November, estimates that to implement its targets the country will need to access $4.5-billion a year from multilateral and bilateral sources by 2025, and $8 billion a year by 2030.

A draft proposal released in March that improved on previous greenhouse-gas emission targets has been criticized by several environmental organizations for not being ambitious enough. Under the new targets, maximum emissions will not exceed 510-million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent units in 2025 and 440-million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent units in 2030.

“There is scope for us to do much more to bring in capital, including concessionary type capital for this,” said Moosa, who helped establish two Johannesburg-based private equity funds and Lereko Investments. “There is capital that’s looking for these projects in countries like South Africa, and remember that we are a developing country, we are in Africa, we are disadvantaged etcetera, etcetera.”

https://www.engineeringnews.co.za/article/south-african-adviser-urges-shift-to-renewables-to-spur-growth-2021-06-01

Replacing South Africa’s aging and inadequate electricity generation capacity with renewable energy plants is an opportunity to spur economic growth and cut emissions, the effective head of a presidential climate change commission said.

While many countries face the problem of having to idle fossil fuel-fired power stations to meet climate commitments, many of South Africa’s decades-old, coal-fired plants are due to close anyway, said Valli Moosa, deputy chairperson of the Presidential Climate Change Coordinating Commission.

“We are an energy-short country. That’s our opportunity and that hole is only going to be filled by renewables,” he said in an interview at his Johannesburg home on May 28. “There is no shortage of appetite on the part of capital to invest in renewable energy in South Africa.”

Eskom Holdings, South Africa’s State-owned power company and a near monopoly, has subjected the country to intermittent outages for more than a decade, partly because of poor maintenance at its fleet of 15 coal-fired stations. Attempts to have private companies build new coal-fired stations in the country have faltered because of the reluctance of banks to finance them.

Shifting to renewables provides Africa’s most industrialized country with a chance to change its economic fortunes, said Moosa, who served as South Africa’s environment minister between 1999 and 2004. The country is the world’s 12th biggest source of the climate-warming gases.

GROWTH SPURT
The transition is “what’s going to give us the next big spurt of economic growth,” he said. “The commission is starting to look at how we can move the South African economy where it is to a low-emissions economy, because we have to. If we don’t we are not going to get the money to develop any other kind of economy, or businesses are going to become uncompetitive.”

Moosa was appointed to the 22-member commission in December and effectively runs it, as its chairperson is President Cyril Ramaphosa.

The main purpose of the body “is to develop a national consensus on how the South African economy moves from where it is currently to a zero emissions economy by 2050,” said Moosa.

The first big issue the climate commission, which has had two meetings so far, will address is South Africa’s energy challenge, said Moosa. The commission has members from major polluters, Eskom and Sasol, as well as labor unions, non-governmental organisations and the Cabinet.

“It’s going to have to build consensus on how we reduce the carbon footprint of our energy industry and at the same time grow the energy supply and make it more dependable,” he said.

http://www.asahi.com/sp/ajw/articles/14362100

A new technology that identifies even low levels of the novel coronavirus in a community by analyzing wastewater will soon be available to municipalities willing to pay for the service, a first in Japan.

Leading drug maker Shionogi & Co., based in Osaka, and Hokkaido University launched a joint study last autumn to develop the technology, which they said can detect the virus, even when only several people are infected, in sewage discharged from tens of thousands of people...

https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/3-strong-buy-stocks-from-a-top-analyst-on-wall-street-2021-05-27

Largo Resources
Rare-earth metals are key ingredients of a host of products in today’s technological world. One of these metals, vanadium, is well-known for both its rarity and its application to a host from products. From high-grade steel to high-yield batteries, vanadium has a place in multiple industries. The metal is expensive, with the European price of vanadium pentoxide flakes (a common industrial form of the metal) running at more than US$8 per pound.

Largo Resources, the first stock we're looking at, is both a miner and refiner of vanadium. The company has one mine, the Maracas Menchen mine in Brazil, that produces vanadium, with 2021 production projected to be between 12,000 and 12,500 tons. This ore is processed into a variety of products by Largo, including the company’s VPure and VPure+ lines. These include pure metal in flake or powder form, as well as the industrially useful vanadium pentoxide alloy. Largo will begin production of vanadium trioxide, used in steel and titanium alloying, later this year.

Largo’s revenue and income can vary quarter to quarter and year over year, based on market demand and mine production. In 1Q21, the company saw $4.1 million in net income, compared to $4.3 million one year ago. Per share, this came to 7 cents, compared to 8 cents in the year-ago quarter. At the top line, revenue was $39.8 million, down 4% from 1Q20.

Heiko Ihle, in his note on Largo, comes to a bullish conclusion: “Largo continues to sell products with prices based on different V2O5 and ferrovanadium benchmarks, as demand within all of its key markets remained strong during the quarter. In particular, we highlight that the company experienced sales volume improvements from the steel and chemical industries…. We highlight the company’s strategy on developing new markets for its high-purity products, while simultaneously focusing on expanding sales into the growing vanadium redox flow battery (VRFB) market…”

In line with these comments, Ihle rates LGO a Buy along with a $20 price target. Should his thesis play out, a potential upside of ~40% could be in the cards

https://seekingalpha.com/article/4431882-vanadium-miners-news-for-the-month-of-may-2021

Agreed. 5 and a bit million pounds each year in fines since 2017 is nothing compared to the amount of money it would take to deal with it properly, they are quite happy to take the hit. All in each others pockets.

A power failure triggered alarms after pumps used in the treatment of sewage stopped working. The malfunction should have been answered remotely by Thames Water staff, and an engineer sent immediately to the treatment works, which is unmanned at night.

As untreated sewage built up below ground, almost 50 warning alarms were set off over the next 5 hours. Every one was left unchecked.

It was only as dawn broke, several hours after the incident began, that a Thames Water engineer arrived at the sewage treatment works, discovering problems with sewage flow and the power supply.

With many of the pumps out of action, effluent rushed through the sewer network and out above ground, flooding the recreation area.

It took Thames Water 15 hours to report the incident to the Environment Agency, a legal requirement, and another 12 hours – by now, the morning of 9 February – before the company had any sizeable presence at the scene.

An Environment Agency investigator found a thick layer of sewage charting a course across the park and into the Hogsmill River. The water’s fast flow had flushed away any evidence before his arrival.

The Hogsmill, and the almost-continuous green corridor through which it passes, is much-loved by local people as a crucial habitat for fish and wildlife as diverse as bats, water voles and kingfishers. A local community garden is watered from the chalk stream.

Sitting at Aylesbury Crown Court on 26 May, Judge Francis Sheridan fined Thames Water £4 million, ordering them to pay the Environment Agency’s costs of £84,669.

Thames Water pleaded guilty to depositing sewage waste at the recreation ground in February 2016. The court also took into consideration breach of a permit regarding that incident, and discharging into the Hogsmill River in January and October 2018, and an incident in September 2019, when sewage sludge was released from Hogsmill sewage treatment works in error.

The Environment Agency charged Thames Water under sections 33 (1) (a) and 33 (6) of the Environmental Protection Act 1990; and regulations 12 (1) (b), 38 (1) (a) and 38 (2) of the Environmental Permitting (England and Wales) Regulations 2016.

This latest conviction brings the total amount of fines given to Thames Water since 2017 to £28.4 million for 10 cases of water pollution.

Beat you to this one Stu;

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/thames-water-fined-4-million-after-catastrophic-sewage-blunder

Thames Water has been fined £4 million after untreated sewage escaped from sewers below London into a park and a river.

A court heard dozens of high-priority alarms would have told staff about the incident, but were either missed or ignored, leading to pollution of a popular park, woodland and the Hogsmill River, in New Malden.

The sewage treatment works at Surbiton couldn’t handle the amount of sewage produced by Storm Imogen in the winter of 2016.

Sitting at Aylesbury crown court on 26 May, Judge Francis Sheridan noted Thames Water’s new commitment to improving compliance, but said that must be the norm, issuing a warning shot they will be held to this commitment in future cases.

The court was told approximately 79 million litres of sludge escaped across an area of about 6,500 square metres. It took 30 people a day for almost a month to clean-up sludge that was ankle-deep in places.

Gary Waddup, a land and water officer for the Environment Agency in south London, said:

Like similar incidents in the past few years for which they have been prosecuted, better management overall and on the night by Thames Water could have prevented this catastrophic incident.

It wasn’t the first time sewage had escaped from manholes due to problems at the treatment works in Surbiton. Pollution as a result from problems at the site goes back to 2001.

The Environment Agency’s enforcement action over several years and the pressure it has put on water companies has led to £30 billion of investment by the industry in water quality. This incident shows Thames Water and the industry have a lot more to do to protect the environment.

Thames Water’s equipment at Hogsmill struggled under the pressure of forecast extreme weather one night 5 years ago.

Instead of the sewage being treated, pumps failed, allowing raw effluent to back up along the sewer network, bursting out of a manhole to cover an area the size of 3 football pitches.

One of Thames Water’s own engineers described finding an “avalanche of foul waste” spread over Green Lane recreation ground. The sewage travelled with such force across the park and into the river, leaving thick sludge, toilet paper and wet wipes covering the riverbank, grass, shrubs and a wooded area.

Enough toilet paper to fill 2,500 refuse bags was recovered from the scene.

An investigation by the Environment Agency found things began to go wrong at the treatment plant just after midnight on 8 February 2016. The park was closed for a month during the clean-up, although some of the toilet paper swept along by the sewage was still visible in the woods months later.

https://cleantechnica.com/2021/05/27/flow-batteries-keep-the-energy-flowing/

The U.S. Department of Energy has just taken a big step toward America having an emissions-free economy by 2050 by setting aside $20 million for flow battery manufacturability.

Granholm understands that for renewable energy sources like solar and wind to take hold and become more commonly used, developing the right energy storage system is crucial.

As Congresswoman Diana DeGette of the U.S. House of Representatives recently told Energy Storage News:

“The key to unlocking the full potential of solar and wind energy is to store it for use around the clock. Flow battery technology can help us utilize the full potential of these clean-energy resources….”...