This is what the article says: " Deep beneath the ground in a...

This is what the article says:

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Deep beneath the ground in a forgotten corner of northern Western Australia lies a behemoth resource of an element many believe may be the key to an energy revolution.
Andres Manuel del Rio didn’t know what he’d found when, in 1801, the Spaniard discovered a colourful compound in Mexico.
Vanadium’s softness and beautiful spectrum of metallic shades belie an unusual strength. Add a touch of vanadium to any steel-making process and you’ll have lighter, tougher and much more resilient steels.
Tools, knives, and rebar – used to reinforce cement – are commonly infused with vanadium, but for years this seemed to be the extent of its usefulness.
Now, more than 200 years after its accidental discovery, vanadium has finally hit its stride.
The metal’s unique properties can be used to create batteries resistant to capacity degradation.
As a result, vanadium flow batteries have an almost limitless energy capacity, making them ideal for large-scale, long-term stationary energy storage in remote areas.
In our age of renewable energy and grid storage, vanadium flow batteries – and the metal itself – have become hot property. Although native vanadium is rare, vanadium-bearing magnetite comprises the bulk of the world’s production.
Vanadium mining has traditionally been dominated by South Africa, China, Russia, and the United States, but future political issues and supply constraints in those countries could put global supplies at risk.
However, a recent find in a very unlikely place may soon help change the landscape of largescale vanadium production globally and, with it, the future of renewable energy.
Northern Western Australia can be rich in resources – in particular a prodigious diamond output – but very few would appreciate that the Kimberley is now home to one of the largest deposits of vanadium in the world.
ASX-listed King River Copper Ltd (KRC) owns 100 per cent of one of the world’s largest Joint Ore Reserves Committee resources of vanadium, titanium and iron hosted in a magnetite – the Speewah Project.
KRC is currently at advanced stages of completion on a second scoping study at Speewah, a unique geological feature hosting a massive 4.7 billion tonne resource. As far back as 2012, KRC undertook a vanadium scoping study based around a solvent extraction technology.
Although the study was completed, the Global Financial Crisis, a high Australian dollar and low vanadium sentiment following the collapse of Atlantic Ltd’s Windimurra vanadium project caused the findings to be mothballed.
Since that time, the Aussie dollar has fallen 25 per cent, extraction methods and technologies have improved materially, and the demand for – and price of – vanadium has exploded.
This dramatic reversal of fortune prompted KRC to take another look at the Speewah site with completely new variables.
KRC’s 2012 scoping of its vanadium project was based around the mining of 6.3 million tonnes a year and a mass recovery to establish a concentrate of less than 10 per cent. The miner’s new study will model a mining rate of nearly double the 2012 study. New methods to concentrate have also improved mass recoveries to more than 15 per cent.
The study’s findings are likely to differentiate Speewah’s future and fortunes from the other vanadium projects planned around the world.
The uncommonly flat-lying nature of King River’s three Speewah deposits provides an opportunity to mine very large volumes with minimum waste.
The region’s robust infrastructure – the nearby Kununurra township and Wyndham Port facilities
– has long serviced the successful Argyle Diamond project.
Chemical precipitation methods are currently being trialled to pursue highest purity products. The unoxidised nature of the vanadium’s mineralisation also helps generate concentrate grades of vanadium typically 30 per cent or more higher than peers.
The larger the project, and the higher the grade of concentrates, the greater the benefits of economies of scale.
The Vanadium deposits at Speewah must have the potential to provide the metal for huge storage capacities required for renewable energy to gain new ground in the 21st century.
The find has also bolstered KRC: the ASX-listed explorer was one of the best performing shares listed on the ASX in the 2017/18 financial year. From a low of only .4 of a cent, the shares rocketed to a high of 19¢ on large volumes.
The annual revenues of KRC modelled into the future could very well be measured in the billions of dollars, as the current scoping is only focused on a theoretical development of only one of three similar deposits.
It’s not often that a find of such global significance appears at the right time, let alone in the right place, but KRC’s Speewah vanadium project seems to have done just that.
Just a touch of vanadium can strengthen steel.
Now, in the twilight of fossil fuels, Speewah’s vanadium reserves have the massive size that may help galvanise the way the world can be powered more efficiently into the future"

- AFR 21st Sep 2018