is estimated to be 0.019 mass %, and its concentration in sea and ocean waters is 1.5·10 ‐6 g/liter [1]. Sedimentary rocks and the granite layers of the lithosphere respectively contain 171 and 623 million tons of vanadium, the hydrosphere contains 2004 million tons, the pedosphere (soil) contains 9.3 million tons, and plants contain 3.75 million tons [2]. Vanadium is constantly being redistributed in nature. Over 3 million tons of this metal have been drawn into global migratory flows, including 260,000 tons/yr in the air, 330,000 tons/yr in the ocean, 40000 tons/yr in river waters in solutions, 2,300,000 tons/yr in river waters in suspensions, and 250,000 tons/yr in eolian processes [2]. As can be seen, the main component of the migration of vanadium in nature is the vanadium carried off into the ocean. More than 2 billion tons of this met al has now been accumulated in the world’s oceans. Vanadium is a trace element and in the lithosphere is encountered mainly in complex polymetallic ores such as titanomagnetite and ilmenite-magnetite. Most of the reserves of these ores are in South Africa, Russia, China, and the U.S. High concentrations of vanadium are also encountered in bauxites and several other complex ores ‐ uranium-vanadium ores and lead-zinc ores. The overall world reserves of vanadium in ore form (calculated in terms of vanadium pentoxide) are about 28 million tons, and the projected reserves are 100 million tons. Given the current level of production (Fig. 1), this means that the there will be enough vanadium to meet the needs of civilization for more than 700 yrs [3, 4]. The large reserves of vanadium are concentrated in sedimentary deposits: oil shales, crude petroleum, oil-bearing sands, phosphate rocks, etc. In the course of the processing of these materials, vanadium is accumulated in various types of industrial waste products, slag, sludge, and ash ‐ materials that are stored near factories. Dumps that contain steelmaking wastes from integrated metallurgical plants have recently come to be regarded as technogenic deposits that can serve as important sources of raw materials for different industries (including the vanadium industry) now and in the future. The following can be considered sources of vanadium-bearing raw materials: ash and cinder from heating and electric power plants (ACHPP); spent catalysts from sulfuric acid production; sludge from titanium and alumina production; by-products and secondary materials from the production of vanadium and ferrovanadium. It should be mentioned that the soluble forms of vanadium in industrial wastes and intermediate products from vanadium production and several other types of operations pose a serious environmental problem. A number of the oxides of vanadium are toxic (being rated as class I‐II hazards) and have harmful effects on the human organism (affecting the circulatory and nervous systems, lungs, etc.). Petroleum is a rich source of various metals ‐ especially vanadium and nickel. The cracking of petroleum converts the metals to heavy fractions in which the concentration of vanadium is increased by several dozen. The heavy fractions from