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.
Dr. Veronique Steukers sets out three principles which will allow companies to manage and measure ESG impacts and engage on a path to improvement.
As much of the world heads to the polls this year, Veronique Steukers explains why newly elected lawmakers should care about nickel and why they should consider three policy asks.
Nickel can be found in many forms from nanowires to stainless steel alloys. But what are the properties of nickel that make it an essential element in batteries?
Dr. Stanley Whittingham is a SUNY distinguished professor of chemistry and the 2019 Chemistry Nobel Laureate for pioneering research leading to the development of the lithium-ion batteries. The Nickel Institute’s battery specialist, Dr. Parvin Adeli caught up with him to talk about his long career in battery research and what’s next.
This is the second article in a series on the impact of temperature on electric vehicles. Given the delivery waiting time for electric vehicles, you may be expecting to receive your EV in summer or next winter. This series has been developed to help you understand the implications of temperature.
World Food Safety Day on 7 June 2023 draws attention to food standards. Foodborne diseases affect 1 in 10 people worldwide each year, and food standards help us to ensure what we eat is safe.
Reducing energy-related CO2 emissions is pivotal to limiting climate change, with the main drivers to bring about the required carbon reductions being renewable energy and energy efficiency. Concentrated solar power is one such renewable energy technology set to increase dramatically in the foreseeable future. It will need to provide energy at a competitive cost to outshine the competition.
Solar farms are blooming in fields across the globe and producing a new crop: solar energy. Photovoltaic (PV) systems made up of solar panels, are fast becoming the most recognisable of renewable energy technologies.
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.
A team of researchers, led by Professor Jeff Dahn at Dalhousie University, have developed and demonstrated batteries that can last four million miles (almost six million km).
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.
More than ten years on from the implementation of the EU’s REACH regulation, NiPERA’s Tara Lyons-Darden looks back and shares some of the learnings and the challenges of maintaining REACH dossiers from the perspective of the Nickel REACH Consortia.
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.
Nickel-based alloys and nickel-containing stainless are playing key roles in an emerging source of renewable energy known as thermal solar plants or concentrated solar power (CSP). Their use has enabled the industry to overcome challenges in heat transfer and thermal storage technology.
“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.”
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.
Professor Stefano Passerini is the Director of the Helmholtz Institute Ulm. In this Battery Chat, he talks to Parri Adeli regarding their work on high-voltage LNMO cathodes and electrolyte additives, among other topics.
Dr. Ilias Belharouak is the head of electrification and energy storage at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. In this Battery Chat, he talks to Parri Adeli about the various energy storage topics his group are investigating including a new class of cathodes that they developed recently and its scale-up path.
Professor Jeff Dahn, at the Department of Physics and Atmospheric Science, Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, Canada explains how single crystal technology is proving to be a promising solution to the challenge of overcoming range anxiety which is high on the agenda of electric vehicle manufacturers and battery developers.
Dr. Feng Lin is an assistant professor in the chemistry department of Virginia Tech. In this Battery Chat, he talks to Parri Adeli about his scientific journey and his research into cathodes and catalysts.
Prof. Arumugam Manthiram, a renowned professor at the University of Texas at Austin, has contributed substantially to the field of energy storage with his research having great impact on the scientific community. In this chat, Prof. Manthiram shares his research path briefly, his perspective on current research performed on high-nickel cathodes, and a glimpse of his future research directions.
New advances in the use of Artificial Intelligence have the potential to speed up the process of alloy development.
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.
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.
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.