Short answers, pulled from the story.
Spanish-Mexican mineralogist Andrés Manuel del Río extracted compounds from Mexican brown lead ore in 1801. He initially named the element panchromium before renaming it erythronium later that same year.
Swedish chemist Nils Gabriel Sefström rediscovered the element in 1831 and chose a name beginning with V which had not yet been assigned to any other element. He called the element vanadium after Old Norse Vanadís to honor the many beautifully colored chemical compounds produced by the substance.
China South Africa and eastern Russia mined more than 96 percent of the 100,000 tons of global output in 2022. China alone provided 70 percent of that total production volume.
Approximately 85 percent of all produced vanadium goes into steel alloys called ferrovanadium. The first large-scale industrial use appeared in the chassis of the Ford Model T where vanadium steel allowed for reduced weight while increasing tensile strength significantly.
Cells utilize plus five and plus two formal oxidation state ions to store energy within an electrochemical cell using aqueous ions. Conversion of these states is illustrated by reducing a strongly acidic solution of vanadium compounds where the initial yellow color changes to blue then green and finally violet.