Global metals recovery specialist refines process to enable more sustainable and less polluting Vanadium recovery, aided by unique academic collaboration.

Increasingly, heavier sourer Crude oils and heavy fuel oils are being used as feed sources for refineries, power plants, boiler and other combustion uses throughout the world. These heavier materials contain high amounts of metal impurities which concentrate in refinery residues and in combustion ashes.  The concentration of metals in crude oils can vary from a few to over 1,000 parts per million. On disposal, these metals pose a potential environmental hazard if landfilled particularly as some are toxic such as some mutagenic Vanadium salts.  Moreover, metals from primary deposits are increasingly scarce.  Recovery of metals from these residues therefore satisfies both environmental and economic needs by providing more sustainable sources.

Vanadium is an important metal and is increasingly being developed for use in Vanadium flow batteries to store power generated by sources such as wind.

In collaboration with the University of Lincoln, GSA Environmental Ltd has taken its proprietary technology and further optimised the recovery and the purity of Vanadium species obtained from ashes and residues.

“The quality of Vanadium demanded by the renewables industry is high and we are pleased that we have been able to develop suitable processes in our Kilo lab to meet those requirements” commented Dr Tony Flinn, Technical Consultant.

“This helps the environment in two obvious ways” said MD Michael Grimley, “Firstly, we use a natural source of the metal and secondly, prevent it from being landfilled and acting as a potential pollutant”.

For further information contact Managing Director Michael Grimley:

GSA Environmental Ltd

7 Market Place

Brigg

North Lincolnshire

UK

DN20 8ES

GSAe technology and know-how is based on the hydrometallurgical extraction of vanadium and nickel using acidic and alkaline leaching, followed by precipitation and filtering of the salts.  Over many years we have optimised the operation of our process, adapting the chemistry for different qualities of ash feed-stock.asic metals extraction scheme would involve the following process steps:

Waste products from the leaching processes would include unconverted silica, carbon and metals which can be disposed of as ‘safe’ waste.  Liquid effluents would be similar to sea water.

We have also been able to research and develop enhancements to the process to open up different feeds from our international clients such as Flexicoke and Slurry Hydrocracking and Hydrogenation process residues.

This is some Vanadium Pentoxide (V2O5) recovered at our plant in Harwich, UK from Flexicoke.