Critical Minerals

On today's Minerals and Sustainable Mining updates, we will focus on #Vanadium

A new life-cycle assessment (LCA) study by independent consultants denkstatt Österreich GmbH for Enerox/CellCube has revealed that Vanadium Redox Flow Batteries (VRFB) have a significantly lower #carbonfootprint compared to lithium-ion battery technology for large-scale energy storage solutions.

The study found that even with conservative estimates of the impact of vanadium production, VRFBs have only 66% of the global warming potential of lithium-ion batteries. The study attributes this advantage to the reusability of the vanadium electrolyte and the ability to utilize material supply from waste, which results in a minimal lifetime of 20-25 years.

Furthermore, the LCA showed that 85.5% of a CellCube FB 500-2000 battery can be directly re-used at the end-of-life and almost all of the remaining materials are recyclable.

Alexander Schoenfeldt, CEO of Enerox GmbH (CellCube) said, “Our VRFB approach is a great example of how a circular economy solution should look like.”