Materials selection for any piece of equipment or a process system is rarely a simple task, unless you are exactly replicating something successful. Often engineers will have a checklist to help them narrow down the choices, eliminating groups of materials that are not suitable for various reasons. Austenitic 300 series stainless steels containing 7-35% nickel will have most if not all of the boxes checked for being suitable where a stainless steel is desired.
Think of the largest cruise ship. Then imagine how much it weighs – just over 100,000 tonnes, in fact. Now think about 500 of those ships, and what they weigh. That is the staggering amount of new electronic waste that we generate every year.
While it may require an initial higher investment when compared with other materials, stainless steel’s unique properties deliver long-term performance and economic benefits including minimum downtime, reduced maintenance costs and reduced environmental impacts.
Even small quantities of nickel in an application can make a big difference to successful deployment.
“There’s a mental hurdle to get over of how inherently gross this could be, but we know that this water is safe, and we stand by our process.”
When Courtney Love wrote this she was not thinking about rockets. It is, however, a perfect description of the history of rocketry. Until the Elon Musk revolution.
Space is hard but nickel makes it possible. The United States of America, through the private company SpaceX, imminently expects to regain its independent way into space.
Most nickel production is destined for stainless steel. But a significant 8% is used in the production of alloy steels which are needed to deliver specific characteristics for specialised and often critical applications.
Partially corrugated stainless steel service pipes have reduced water leakage rates drastically in Tokyo where they were introduced in the 1980s. Now other innovative water authorities faced with the urgent need to reduce water loss are also examining the nickel-containing stainless steel solution.