VanadiumCorp Resource Inc. is pleased to announce the Government of India, Patent Office, issued the Grant of Patent (Number: 517528) for the hydrometallurgical processes for recovering vanadium and iron values from vanadiferous titanomagnetite and vanadiferous feedstocks.
The patent is for the Vanadiumcorp-Electrochem Process Technology (“VEPT”), invented by the prominent electrochemist Dr. Francois Cardarelli and now 100% owned by Vanadiumcorp. The term of the patent runs for twenty years from February 21, 2018. VEPT is now patented in the U.S.A., South Africa, Australia, and India. Patent applications are pending in the EU and Canada only. Additionally, VanadiumCorp has filed a Continuation Patent in the U.S.A. that contains broader claims. All the granted patents and pending applications are current and fully up to date.
Paul McGuigan, P. Geo., CEO of the Company, stated:
“We are pleased to be granted a patent for our VEPT process lately in Australia and now India. Australia is endowed with rich vanadium mineral resources and robust mine development activity. India has significant vanadiferous feedstocks, such as refinery wastes and fly-ash. With these two additions to our patent-protected sphere, VanadiumCorp can protect its developing know-how in extracting vanadium from primary mineral concentrates, fly ash and the slags from electric arc furnaces.”
The VEPT process consists of digesting vanadiferous titanomagnetite magnetite and other feedstocks into concentrated sulfuric acid to minimize energy consumption significantly compared to conventional pyrometallurgical processes for vanadium. After reducing the pregnant solution electrochemically, the VEPT process recovers ferrous sulfate heptahydrate (“Copperas”), titanium hydrolysate and vanadyl sulfate. Vanadyl sulphate is a precursor for preparing the vanadium electrolytes used in vanadium flow batteries (VFBs) or various vanadium chemicals used in lithium-ion and vanadium-ion batteries.