With the completion of the vanadium electrolyte plant with an annual output of 60,000 m³ in Panzhihua of Ace Energy as the key node, nearly 200 governments, parks, scientific research institutes, leading industrial chains in China and Japan, financial institutions and partners gathered in the "Vanadium Electricity City". An in-depth dialogue was held around the technology iteration of all-vanadium flow battery, the improvement of electrolyte quality, the guarantee of raw material supply, the innovation of EaaS leasing model and the co-construction of residual value assessment system.
Mr. Daze Shizheng, chairman of Ice Energy, and Mr. Chen Xi, chairman of Panzhihua Urban Construction Transportation Group delivered a speech, jointly pointing out that Panzhihua has the core vanadium and titanium strategic resources in China, and promoting resources from "primary raw material output" to "long-term energy storage and high value-added assets" is a two-way direction of urban industrial transformation and new power system construction.
A "Thought Closed Loop" covering all propositions of the Industry
From the bottom of technology to the top of assets, the sharing of six speakers connected a complete industrial logic chain.
Long-term energy storage has entered the national industrial window period
Zhang Hua-min, chief researcher of Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, set the tune for the summit with detailed installation data and policy context: With the "15th Five-Year" new battery industry development Plan, the flow battery is included in the key breakthrough sequence of the whole chain, and many countries will include 10 hours of long-term energy storage into the mandatory grid connection, 4 hours and more projects have become the new mainstream. In the all-vanadium route with "natural decoupling of power and capacity", the unit cost decreases marginal for each hour of energy storage duration, and the life-cycle cost of the 10-hour system can be reduced to about 560 yuan /kWh. He made suggestions to Panzhihua: preemption of financial grade electrolyte trace impurity quantitative detection and industry standards, the resource endowment into rules of discourse.
▌ International perspective | Sumitomo Electric anchors the core position of electrolyte
Sumitomo Electric is one of the earliest companies in the world to engage in the development and commercialization of flow batteries, and is also a recognized leader in the industry. Soichiro Fukui, Director of RF Battery Business Development Department of Sumitomo Electric Industry Co., LTD., based on the experience of global commercialization projects, emphasized that the electrolyte purity and batch consistency are the underlying variables that determine the life of the stack and the system energy efficiency, providing a global precision manufacturing reference frame for the quality management of Panxi production capacity.
▌ Preparing for revolution | Two cost-cutting paths clash on the same day
Dr. Zheng Pengfei (Professor Ma Jun's team) from the University of Science and Technology brought the electron beam irradiation technology to achieve over 95% leaching of vanadium slag in 10 seconds, without strong acid at room temperature and pressure, and to build V3.5⁺ mixed valence electrolyte in one step, skipping the high energy consumption and secondary pollution of the traditional roaching-extraction six-step process.
Liu Sample, director of Lanxiao science and technology, gave another pole of industrialization landing: vanadium sulfate crystal will control the valence, packaging, transportation three hidden costs cut nearly a quarter, the electrolyte is expected to further reduce the price; The Sichuan Blue Vanadium 26,000 tons solid electrolyte project, which is also located in Panzhihua, is planned to be mass-produced in the first quarter of 2027. Both paths lead to the same conclusion: the "jammed neck" link, which accounts for nearly half of the cost of the system, is being systematically disrupted by short flow technology on the material side.
