Vanadium is a strange and fascinating metal.
It’s hard, ductile and lustrous, transforming from a silvery grey to blue, yellow, green or purple upon exposure to the open air.
It can block heat and conduct electricity perfectly, defying the normal rule that materials that support electricity are also good thermal conductors.
And it could be the answer to the expanding, energy-hungry artificial intelligence infrastructure sector, with data centres rising around Australia’s major cities.
“It’s exciting – it’s, you know, a big thing at the moment,” the head of the country’s only pure vanadium play, Graham Arvidson, told AAP on the sidelines of the Diggers & Dealers Mining Forum in Western Australia.
