The ambitious future of India’s rail infrastructure requires prudent investments that ensure its long-term viability. This is where nickel-containing steels play a vital role.
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.
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.
The upstream and midstream oil and gas industries rely on nickel-containing corrosion resistant alloys for flowlines and risers. Rodrigo Signorelli, Outokumpu’s lead technical manager for marine and energy, explains how alloys reach the market.
A new generation of designers, materials specifiers, architects and engineers is being introduced to the wealth of technical information curated by the Nickel Institute. An archive of technical guides and know-how for working with nickel-containing materials, including stainless steel, that has been built over thirty years is now being updated and made freely available.
If you’re like me and predictive text has led to some awkward if not amusing moments, you might be sceptical about Artificial Intelligence (AI). But its achievements are already overwhelming and changing, even protecting, our lives in many sectors.
The present-day principal driver in the Li-ion industry is the large batteries required for electric vehicles. Due to the size of these batteries and the relative growth of electric vehicles it is predicted that the total Li-ion energy capacity will exceed one tera watt-hour by 2030. This anticipation for a dramatically rapidly expanding industry has stakeholders all along the value chain very motivated to be ready.
New advances in the use of Artificial Intelligence have the potential to speed up the process of alloy development.
Nickel’s role in enabling technologies is not always common knowledge. Yet its versatile properties present great opportunity for the nickel industry.