Use of nickel
Nickel is a very important non-ferrous metal raw material. It is used to manufacture different types of stainless steel and nickel alloy steel. The nickel content in the steel is different. The difference in alloy is obvious and widely used in various military manufacturing industries. Pure nickel can make a variety of Instruments, nickel crucibles, pipes, instruments and heat exchangers, etc. In the civil industry, acid-resistant steel and heat-resistant steel are widely used in various machinery manufacturing industries. Nickel can also be used as ceramic pigments and anti-corrosion electroplating materials. Nickel-cobalt alloy is a permanent magnetic material widely used in electronic remote control and other fields. In the chemical industry, nickel is often used as a catalyst. In recent years, the amount of nickel used in electronic appliances, batteries and other communication equipment is also increasing rapidly.
Nickel ore classification
1. Sulfide ore
Most of these ores are magmatic molten nickel ores. Among them, rich ores containing more than 3% nickel are available for direct general refining; ores containing less than 3% nickel require beneficiation treatment.
2. Oxide ore
The laterite in the nickel oxide ore is high in iron and low in silicon and magnesium (also called iron ore), and the nickel content is 1 to 2%; and the nickel silicate ore is low in iron and high in silicon and magnesium (also called silicon magnesium nickel) Mine), containing nickel in 1.5 ~ 4%.
Nickel resources
Currently, the world’s proven nickel reserves are about 160 million tons, of which sulfide ore accounts for about 30%, and laterite nickel ore accounts for about 70%. Due to the good quality of nickel sulfide ore resources and mature process technology, about 60% of the nickel output now comes from nickel sulfide ore. Due to the long-term mining of nickel sulfide ore, there has been no major breakthrough in the exploration of new resources of nickel sulfide ore in the past 20 years, and reserves are maintained A sharp decline. If calculated based on the annual output of 1.2 million tons of nickel, it would be equivalent to the completion of a Canadian Voith Bay nickel deposit in 2 years (the only large deposit found in the past two decades, the fifth largest nickel sulfide deposit in the world) and 5 years of mining Jinchuan Nickel Mine (the third largest nickel sulfide mine in the world). Therefore, at present, global nickel sulfide ore resources have experienced a resource crisis, and several traditional nickel sulfide ore mines (Sudbury, Canada, Norelsk, Russia, Kamborda, Australia, Jinchuan, China, and South Africa) Tengsburg, etc.) mining depth is getting deeper and the mining is more difficult.
For this reason, the global nickel industry has focused its resource development on the lateritic nickel ore resources with rich reserves. Laterite nickel deposits are surface weathered crust deposits formed by weathering-leaching-deposition of nickel sulfide ore bodies, which are concentrated in the tropical-subtropical regions of the Pacific Rim, mainly including Cuba and Brazil in the Americas; Indonesia and the Philippines in Southeast Asia; Australia, New Caledonia, Papua New Guinea, etc. in Oceania.