[en] The carbon reduction of vanadium pentoxide was investigated in an argon plasma-arc furnace. The briquette of a vanadium pentoxide and carbon mixture was examined, and the results are as follows: 1) The best mixing ratio of carbon and vanadium pentoxide, C/V₂O₅, was about 4.5 and was smaller than the stoichiometric ratio of 5. When the mixing ratio was less than 4.5, the oxygen remaining in the product increased, while the vanadium carbide increased when it was greater than 5. 2) The sample was dissolved within 45 sec by plasma-arc melting and the reduction of vanadium pentoxide proceeded rapidly to nearly 90%V. The reduction that followed in the molten state was slow. Within 10 min the maximum vanadium content reached 96%. 3) Sintering of the briquette resulted in good recovery of vanadium due to the diminished loss of the sample under the plasma flame. 4) The increase of the vanadium content was not observed as temperature was increased from 2100 to 2800⁰C. 5) The hardness of the product with the maximum vanadium content was about Hv 290 and was much larger than that of vanadium metal due to the small amount of remaining oxygen and/or carbon. 6) By means of EPMA, the presence of the highly grown dendritic primary crystals contained small amounts of carbon and oxygen in the state of solid solution was observed. In this study, a vanadium metal of 96% purity has been produced within 10 min in spite of the strong affinity of vanadium with carbon or oxygen. (auth.)