T&T’s vanadium ambitions face raw material, energy concerns

Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

Trinidad and To­ba­go’s plans to re­vive the for­mer Arcelor­Mit­tal steel plant at Point Lisas are rais­ing ques­tions over how the coun­try will pro­duce vana­di­um, where the raw ma­te­r­i­al will come from and whether there is enough en­er­gy ca­pac­i­ty to sup­port the am­bi­tious plans.

The min­er­al, which is used in spe­cial­i­ty steel, aero­space ap­pli­ca­tions and bat­tery tech­nol­o­gy, is ex­pect­ed to form part of the plant’s new in­dus­tri­al role be­yond its tra­di­tion­al steel­mak­ing op­er­a­tions.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, met­al­lur­gist Pro­fes­sor Clement Im­bert ques­tioned whether T&T has the raw ma­te­ri­als nec­es­sary to pro­duce vana­di­um do­mes­ti­cal­ly.

“I do not think that we have any ca­pac­i­ty to pro­duce vana­di­um on our own,” Im­bert said.

He be­lieves the coun­try would have to im­port the nec­es­sary raw ma­te­ri­als be­fore pro­cess­ing them here.

“We’ll have to im­port raw ma­te­ri­als,” Im­bert said.

Vana­di­um is a metal­lic el­e­ment that is rarely used in its pure form. Its ma­jor in­dus­tri­al val­ue comes from its abil­i­ty to strength­en steel and im­prove prop­er­ties such as hard­ness, dura­bil­i­ty and re­sis­tance to wear.

It is, there­fore, used in spe­cialised steels, in­clud­ing ap­pli­ca­tions where strength and per­for­mance are crit­i­cal.

“Vana­di­um, like many oth­er min­er­als, like chromi­um and tung­sten and those things, are used in mak­ing spe­cial­ist steels and are used for oth­er pur­pos­es al­so.”

One of its in­creas­ing­ly im­por­tant ap­pli­ca­tions is in en­er­gy stor­age.

Vana­di­um can be used in bat­ter­ies, which store elec­tric­i­ty in liq­uid elec­trolytes and can be par­tic­u­lar­ly use­ful for large-scale, long-du­ra­tion en­er­gy stor­age, an in­creas­ing­ly im­por­tant tech­nol­o­gy as coun­tries ex­pand re­new­able-en­er­gy gen­er­a­tion.

That strate­gic val­ue has placed vana­di­um among min­er­als at­tract­ing in­creased at­ten­tion from gov­ern­ments seek­ing to strength­en crit­i­cal-min­er­al sup­ply chains.

The ques­tions come as lo­cal sub­sidiary Ibis Steel Com­pa­ny, backed by US-based Pin­na­cle Steel and Vana­di­um Cor­po­ra­tion, be­gins re­fur­bish­ment of the for­mer Arcelor­Mit­tal fa­cil­i­ty.

At Mon­day’s rib­bon-cut­ting cer­e­mo­ny, CEO Ed­win Ben­nett said the com­pa­ny plans an over­all in­vest­ment of US$750 mil­lion, with the po­ten­tial to cre­ate up to 1,000 per­ma­nent jobs.

First pro­duc­tion is tar­get­ted for the end of 2027.

Ben­nett has de­scribed vana­di­um as the project’s key dif­fer­en­tia­tor and said the com­pa­ny wants to pro­duce the equiv­a­lent of 50 per cent of US vana­di­um con­sump­tion.

Im­bert said T&T does not have an ob­vi­ous do­mes­tic source of the raw ma­te­r­i­al.

He point­ed to the coun­try’s pre­vi­ous steel-mak­ing ex­pe­ri­ence, not­ing that Arcelor­Mit­tal had to im­port its iron ore, pri­mar­i­ly from Brazil.

He said the same fun­da­men­tal is­sue would ap­ply to a new vana­di­um op­er­a­tion if the nec­es­sary feed­stock is not avail­able lo­cal­ly.

Im­bert said the for­mer Arcelor­Mit­tal fa­cil­i­ty could po­ten­tial­ly be adapt­ed for the new op­er­a­tion.

He added that the plant was rel­a­tive­ly mod­ern and in­cor­po­rat­ed the MIDREX di­rect-re­duced iron process, which us­es nat­ur­al gas to re­move oxy­gen from iron ore.

“They should be able to re­vive that plant to pro­duce dif­fer­ent types of met­als and vana­di­um and vana­di­um-type steel,” he said.

But Im­bert cau­tioned that the avail­abil­i­ty of nat­ur­al gas could be­come an­oth­er fac­tor in de­ter­min­ing whether the pro­posed op­er­a­tion is eco­nom­i­cal­ly vi­able.

On Mon­day, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar an­nounced a land­mark cross-bor­der gas break­through and a se­ries of ma­jor en­er­gy and in­dus­tri­al agree­ments dur­ing an of­fi­cial vis­it by US Deputy Sec­re­tary of State Christo­pher Lan­dau. In do­ing so, the Prime Min­is­ter sig­nalled an in­dus­tri­al re­new­al in T&T and said the coun­try will be se­cur­ing the gas need­ed to sus­tain it.