Nitriding process for the recovery of vanadium from ferrovanadium

A three step process based on nitriding-leaching-pyrovacuum decomposition has been developed to prepare vanadium-nitrogen alloy from ferro-vanadium. Recent investigations in the laboratory have shown that pure vanadium can be contained from such an alloy by fused salt electrorefining. The process essentially involves nitriding of ferrovanadium powder with ammonia at 950--1,000 C. Nitrided ferroalloy was then leached with 2N HCl at 50 C to leach out iron nitrides. The residue analyzing 2.1% Fe and 15.5% N was then treated at 1,550 C under a dynamic vacuum of 0.3 m torr to yield vanadium-nitrogen alloy analyzing about 5.76% N and 0.28% C. Adopting this process a few hundred grams of V-N alloy has been prepared for use as soluble anode in fused salt electrorefining cell to prepare vanadium metal