Daily Current Affairs Article 12th January 2021: Arunachal Pradesh, considered a sleeping hydropower giant, could be India’s prime producer of vanadium, a high-value metal used in strengthening steel and titanium.
Vanadium is a chemical element with the symbol V and atomic number 23. It is a hard, silvery-grey, malleable transition metal.
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The elemental metal is rarely found in nature. It is recovered as a by-product from the slag collected from the processing of vanadiferous magnetite ores (iron ore).
Vanadium is a high-value metal used in strengthening steel and titanium.
The largest deposits of vanadium of the world are in China, followed by Russia and South Africa.
China, which produces 57% of the world’s vanadium, consumed 44% of the metal in 2017.
India is a significant consumer of vanadium, but is not a primary producer of the strategic metal.
According to data provided by the GSI, India consumed 4% of about 84,000 tonnes of vanadium produced across the globe in 2017.
