Heather Allain, Executive Director, Materials Technology Institute (MTI), tells us about her passion for materials and the importance of MTI’s work to provide awareness of safe, reliable and sustainable materials use.
China’s annual “two sessions” gives an indication of China’s broad policy direction for the year, covering topics from the economy to industrial strategy to environmental protection. David Chen explains the highlights, and the implications for the nickel value chain.
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.
Each family of stainless steels has its strengths and weaknesses. Ferritic stainless steels have useful properties – a lower rate of thermal expansion, higher thermal conductivity, strong ferromagnetism and very high resistance to chloride stress corrosion cracking (SCC). When looking at selecting any alloys, it is important to consider all the factors for successful usage.
The duplex alloys are “problem-solving alloys” for good reason, they have been successfully used in many places where carbon steels and standard austenitic alloys have failed. Just like with the austenitic family, there are many different duplex alloys to choose from, with corrosion resistance varying from moderate with the lean duplex alloys to very high with the superduplex alloys.
The selection of an alloy should be guided by careful examination of the needs of the application. Before making a switch, it’s important to fully investigate an alloy’s strengths, weaknesses and applicability to your structure.
In 2021, China recorded the strongest growth in the EV market with around 3.2 million EVs sold. This was an increase of 2 million EV units compared to 2020 which was more than the combined increase of all other regions taken together.
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.
Major economies across the globe are setting climate neutrality targets. But proper measurement and methodologies are needed to provide transparency and common benchmarks when assessing carbon footprint. At a recent event in China, there was general consensus on the importance of adopting a harmonized approach to carbon footprint calculation and disclosure.
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.”
New advances in the use of Artificial Intelligence have the potential to speed up the process of alloy development.
New energy legislation is set to optimize China’s energy structure and boost the use of non-fossil energy. Aligning with China’s regulatory agenda, nickel will play a vital role in tomorrow’s world powered by cleaner energy.
Food safety starts with rigorous hygiene, and nickel-containing stainless steels are the superior, reliable standard at every link of the food chain.
Ever-tightening sulphur oxide (SOx) emission regulations are increasing the use of marine scrubbers globally. Scrubbers operate in a highly corrosive environment and require the resilience of nickel-containing alloys to prevent failure.
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.