Unlocking the world’s building blocks

from upcycled industrial waste.

Our Mission

OptionV exists to unlock a resilient, domestic critical mineral supply chain, powered by circularity and guided by biomimicry. We turn overlooked industrial byproducts into chemicals that fuel how we make, move, and live - focusing first on Vanadium.

Our Vision

We envision a world where resource recovery is smarter, cleaner, and more localized. Our goal is to help decarbonize heavy industries , enable energy storage at scale, and unlock new applications of lesser known critical minerals, without opening another mine.

Critical minerals supply chains are fragile, harmful, and wasteful.

Only ~18% of global vanadium is produced through primary mining (none of which is in the US); ~68% is derived as a co-product of steelmaking (vanadium slags), and ~14% from secondary recycling (spent catalysts/petroleum residues).

As a result, the U.S. imports over 95% of its vanadium, leaving our energy and manufacturing sectors exposed to geopolitical shocks. Traditional mining and smelting are carbon-intensive, water-hungry, and take an average of 17 years to bring online.

Mining and material inefficiencies affect industrial inputs.

Primary, vanadium production without efficient recycling produces 5 times more CO2 than, secondary, recycling methods, but this is still lower than the emissions caused by the, extra, structural, material required when not using vanadium. 

Power plants, refineries, and steelmakers generate thousands of metric tons (t) of vanadium-rich waste annually, most of it landfilled or stored. As of 2020, some producers held an estimated 380 to 780 t of vanadium content in tailings, representing recoverable inventory sitting idle due to market conditions that could instead be valorized.

Vanadium-based long-duration energy storage need a boost.

The clean energy transition hinges on long-duration storage, and vanadium redox flow batteries (VRFBs) are a leading solution. But, vanadium accounts for 30–50% of VRFB system cost. today’s vanadium supply chains rely on mining, creating ESG risks, supply insecurity, and price volatility.

Why It Matters: Metrics That Move Markets

  • Reliability for Aerospace & Defense

    Titanium-Vanadium-Aluminum alloys serve as the "workhorse" of the aerospace and defense industries. Ti-6Al-4V specifically is used in over 50% of all titanium applications in aerospace. No alternative material matches its unique blend of properties, meaning a disruption to supply, including shortages in capacity and access, could threaten national security and innvoation.

  • Industrial Decarbonization

    Vanadium-based catalysts are critical in environmental engineering for reducing industrial and mobile emissions, particularly in selective catalytic reduction (SCR) to convert harmful nitrogen oxides (NOx) into harmless nitrogen (N2) and water (H20). These catalysts are essential for complying with strict air quality regulations due to their high efficiency, with the ability to achieve >90% NOx removal in industrial, marine, and power plant applications. 

  • Material Efficiency in Steelmaking

    Adding 0.1-0.2 percent of vanadium can double the strength of steel. By integrating recovered vanadium into master alloys and high steel low alloy (HSLA) steel production, manufacturers can reduce total raw material needs by up to 30% and support lighter, stronger infrastructure with fewer emissions and imports.

  • Boosting Long Duration Energy Storage

    OptionV’s approach can reduce electrolyte costs by 20–40%, helping VRFBs achieve price parity with lithium-ion for multi-day storage, offering a scalable, sustainable alternative to power the grid of the future, without any green premium.

Harvesting Mining-Free Vanadium

OptionV develops sustainable vanadium extraction and recycling technologies to secure supply chains for the chemical, aerospace and defense, and steel industries—without new mining.

  • Mining-Free Extraction: Electrochemical recovery from waste, not ore.

  • Secure Supply Chains: Reduces reliance on geopolitically concentrated mining.

  • Adding capacity for national security, grid resilience, and sustainable industry targets.

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