Abstract: A method of separating vanadium from waste ash including generating a high temperature thermal plasma; contacting the waste ash with the high temperature thermal plasma in the presence of oxygen, thereby forming a layer of iron from iron and iron components contained within the waste ash and a layer of slag on top of the iron layer; causing vanadium contained within the waste ash to collect at an upper surface of the layer of iron and then react with the oxygen to form vanadium oxides and combine with the layer of slag; removing most of, but not all of, the layer of iron; stirring the layer of slag without addition of more of the oxygen; adding aluminum and carbon to the layer of slag; reducing or terminating power supplied to generate the high temperature thermal plasma; causing the aluminum to replace the vanadium in the vanadium oxides and causing the carbon to remove oxygen from iron oxides in the remaining portion of the layer of iron, whereby vanadium and iron combine to form a ferro-vanadium alloy.