Research progress and prospect of vanadium deposits

As a kind of essential and vital resources, vanadium has been listed as the critical metal by some countries. In this paper, the authors thoroughly summarize the deposit types, geological features and spatial-temporal distributions and metallogenic mechanisms of vanadium deposits, hoping to enrich theoretical research of vanadium deposits, to improve the efficiency of prediction and exploration of vanadium resources, and to guarantee the vanadium reserves. According to the ore-forming process, vanadium deposits are divided into magmatic vanadium deposit and sedimentary vanadium deposit. The magmatic vanadium deposits, which mainly refer to V-Ti-magnetite deposits, are formed contemporaneously during the evolution and emplacement of mafic–ultramafic magma, and the vanadium from the upper mantle enriched in the V-bearing titanomagnetite by crystal fractionation. The sedimentary vanadium deposits mainly concentrate in the Low Cambrian black rock series, in which vanadium is derived from seawater and wall rock and is enriched in organic matter by absorption or silicate minerals by isomorphism due to reducing of the redox potential. A number of scientific problems concerning mineralization processes of vanadium deposits such as the sources of vanadium, their migration process, and the state and enrichment condition need to be solved in the future. It is suggested that the study of the chemical behavior of V, the physical, chemical and biological conditions of wall rock, and the geodynamic settings of magma are crucial to understand the metallogenic mechanism of vanadium deposits.