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.
After several years of negotiation between EU institutions, the EU Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) Regulation was adopted in 2023.
The new EU Battery regulation has implications for nickel producers both inside and outside Europe. If they are supplying material to the EU battery chain destined for the European market all producers need to comply with the new rules.
Because the first step in reducing emissions is to measure them, the Nickel Institute has produced guidance to help nickel metal producers calculate their GHG emissions.
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 sudden failure of a building or bridge is mercifully a rare event, thanks largely to international or national standards: structures are designed in accordance with a design standard, using products conforming to a product standard and manufactured using techniques and to a quality level defined in a construction standard.
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.
Steven Verpaele, the Nickel Institute’s Industrial Hygienist explains how a new workplace exposure collection tool and database system will help prevent occupational diseases and contribute to creating a health and safety culture at the workplace.
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.
Batteries, notably those used in electric vehicles, play an essential role in the plans of the European Commission to deliver the EU Green Deal. They are considered as a critical and strategic technology to achieve Europe´s ambitious climate change mitigation targets and to move towards green and sustainable mobility.
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.
Even small quantities of nickel in an application can make a big difference to successful deployment.
Geothermal energy for electric power production has a low profile yet is significant in the current and potential energy mix for a number of countries. It has also been described as the most reliable of the renewable energy sources, above weather-dependent wind, solar and hydropower.
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.
Steven Verpaele, the Nickel Institute’s Industrial Hygienist explains the different ways that the work he leads is helping to contributing to the culture of occupational safety and health that respects the right to a safe and healthy working environment at all levels.
Food safety starts with rigorous hygiene, and nickel-containing stainless steels are the superior, reliable standard at every link of the food chain.
European nickel producers need a consistent regulatory framework. There must be coherence between different EU policy objectives with rules based on principles of sound science, risk-based approaches, full life-cycle thinking and impact assessments.
Should we be worried about there being enough nickel to supply the transition to electric vehicles and cleaner energy sources? Given its wide range of uses in important existing and emerging technologies, this is a frequently asked question.