Vanadium · element 23
Discovered twice, named for a Norse goddess, and now the secret ingredient in tough steel and giant batteries
Key facts
Vanadium is a metal most people have never heard of but have almost certainly relied on. A pinch of it in steel makes spanners, drill bits and car axles that resist wear and shock, and it was vanadium steel that let the Ford Model T be both light and rugged. In the laboratory it is famous for something else: its compounds run through a rainbow of colours as the metal changes oxidation state.
Its story includes a discovery that was argued out of existence, a second discovery thirty years later, and a name borrowed from Norse mythology in honour of those colours.
Where it is found
Vanadium rarely forms rich ores of its own. Instead it rides along at low concentrations in dozens of minerals and in fossil fuels. Most production comes from vanadium-bearing magnetite iron ores in China, Russia and South Africa, where the vanadium is recovered from steelmaking slag. It is also extracted from the ash and residues of heavy crude oils, from uranium-vanadium ores in the United States, and from spent refinery catalysts.
Seawater contains vanadium at a few parts per billion, and some marine organisms concentrate it dramatically. Certain sea squirts hold vanadium in their blood cells at levels enormously higher than the surrounding water, for reasons that are still not fully understood. The fly agaric mushroom contains a vanadium compound called amavadin. Humans carry only traces, with no confirmed essential role.
How it was discovered
In 1801 Andrés Manuel del Río, a Spanish mineralogist working in Mexico City, found a new element in a brown lead ore and, noting the red colour of its salts when heated, named it erythronium. He sent samples to Europe, where a French chemist declared it was merely impure chromium, and del Río accepted the verdict. In 1830 the Swede Nils Gabriel Sefström found the element again in iron from a Swedish mine and named it vanadium after Vanadis, a name for the goddess Freyja, because its compounds were so beautifully coloured. Friedrich Wöhler soon showed that erythronium and vanadium were the same thing. Reasonably pure metal was first made by Henry Roscoe in Manchester in 1867.
What we use it for
Around 85 per cent of vanadium goes into steel. A few tenths of a per cent forms fine carbides that stop crystal grains growing, giving high-strength low-alloy steels for pipelines, bridges, reinforcing bar and vehicle frames, and tool steels for cutting and forging. Vanadium is also alloyed with titanium and aluminium for jet engine parts and airframes.
Vanadium pentoxide is the catalyst that converts sulfur dioxide to sulfur trioxide in the manufacture of sulfuric acid, one of the largest chemical processes on Earth. A growing use is the vanadium redox flow battery, which stores energy in two tanks of vanadium solution held in different oxidation states. These batteries are large and heavy, but they can be charged and discharged tens of thousands of times without wearing out, which suits them to storing wind and solar power for the grid.
Reading the numbers
Vanadium melts at about 1910 °C, several hundred degrees above iron, and boils at about 3407 °C. Its density is 6.0 g/cm³, three quarters that of iron, which is one reason it adds strength to alloys without adding much weight. The configuration [Ar] 3d3 4s2 gives five outer electrons, and vanadium can use anywhere from two to five of them. That is why it has stable +2, +3, +4 and +5 oxidation states, seen as violet, green, blue and yellow solutions respectively, a classic school demonstration of transition metal chemistry. Its first five ionisation energies rise smoothly before a jump to over 12,000 kJ per mole at the sixth, confirming that five is the maximum. As a group 5 transition metal it sits between titanium and chromium in period 4, and shares its many-state chemistry with niobium and tantalum below it.
Safety and the environment
Vanadium metal is not especially hazardous, but vanadium pentoxide dust is toxic if inhaled and can cause irritation of the airways and, oddly, a greenish-black tongue, so workers handling it need protection. Vanadium compounds are released when heavy fuel oils are burned and turn up in soot around some power stations and ports. The electrolyte in a flow battery is acidic and must be well contained, but the vanadium in it can be recovered and reused indefinitely, which is a point in its favour compared with some other battery chemistries.
Did you know?
- Henry Ford used vanadium steel in the Model T from 1908 because it was much stronger than ordinary steel for the same weight.
- Some sea squirts concentrate vanadium in their blood cells to levels many thousands of times higher than in seawater.
- Vanadium's four common oxidation states give four distinct colours in solution: violet, green, blue and yellow, and a single reducing agent can walk a solution through all of them.
- Vanadium pentoxide is the catalyst at the heart of sulfuric acid production, the world's most manufactured chemical.
- The name honours Vanadis, another name for the Norse goddess Freyja, chosen because of the beauty of the element's coloured compounds.
- Natural vanadium is almost entirely vanadium-51, with a quarter of one per cent of vanadium-50, which is very faintly radioactive with a half-life far longer than the age of the universe.
More in the transition metals
Column-mates come first, since elements in one column have outer electrons arranged in a similar way and tend to behave alike; the rest are the nearest neighbours in the family.
See all 38 transition metals on one page, or browse all 118 elements.
Frequently asked questions
What is vanadium used for?
Mostly for strengthening steel: small additions make tougher tools, springs, axles and structural steel. It is also alloyed with titanium for aircraft, used as a catalyst in making sulfuric acid, and stored in solution in vanadium flow batteries for grid energy storage.
Why does vanadium change colour?
Vanadium can lose two, three, four or five electrons, and each oxidation state absorbs different wavelengths of light. Reducing a yellow vanadium(V) solution with zinc turns it blue, then green, then violet as the metal moves through +4, +3 and +2.
Is vanadium toxic?
The metal is fairly harmless, but vanadium pentoxide dust irritates the lungs and eyes and is a workplace hazard in refineries and steelworks. Vanadium is found in tiny amounts in food and is not considered a nutrient people need to seek out.
What is a vanadium battery?
A vanadium redox flow battery stores energy in two large tanks of acidic vanadium solution, pumped past a membrane where electrons transfer between them. It is bulky, so it is used for stationary grid storage rather than cars, but it lasts for decades and can be fully discharged without damage.
Read next
Guess the mystery element in six tries. A new one every day, free, no sign-up.
Written by Anthony. Updated September 2026. Numerical data from Periodic-Table-JSON (CC BY-SA), cross-checked against the Vanadium reference article. Spotted an error? Tell us.