Australian Vanadium announced that it has successfully commissioned its vanadium electrolyte manufacturing facility and produced its first high-purity vanadium electrolyte for use in VFBs.

The news follows the announcement of the completion of construction of the facility in December 2023 and the official opening by Federal Resources Minister, the Hon. Madeleine King MP in January 2024. The facility is Western Australia’s first VFB electrolyte manufacturing plant and AVL is using electrolyte manufacturing technology licensed from U.S. Vanadium exclusively to AVL in Australia and New Zealand. 

AVL reported that an independent analysis of the vanadium electrolyte produced at the facility shows that the impurities in the electrolyte were well within limits typically expected by vanadium flow battery manufacturers. AVL is reportedly ready to accept orders for material and samples of vanadium electrolyte produced at the facility will now be provided to manufacturers of vanadium flow batteries for formal qualification.

The plant is one of more than 30 plants being tracked by Project Blue and has capacity to produce high-purity electrolyte to support up to 33MWh per year of VFB energy storage. As such, at full capacity, the plant would consume more than 200tpy of V contained in high-purity pentoxide according to Project Blue estimates.