A year ago, Tesla came up with the 4680 battery concept. The 4680 battery is the size, 80 mm in length and 46 cm in width. To improve battery life and save money, Tesla came up with the concept of a new type of battery. The battery has a 16 percent increase in battery life and a 14 percent decrease in cost. Tesla plans to build a 4680 battery production line in Ontario, Canada, which is currently under construction. Panasonic is also preparing to mass produce the main cell for Tesla. Domestic billion latitude lithium can have produced 4680 products, but also obtained the recognition of the relevant vehicle enterprises. On November 5th it announced investment in a 20GWh production line for passenger cars, 4680 cylinders, and a 16GWh square lithium iron phosphate battery line in Jingmen. And plans to start mass production at 2023. 01. The trend of high nickel batteries in overseas markets is notable. At present, the overseas market is still dominated by three-element Lithium batteries. However, high nickel batteries have emerged gradually from this year and become the first choice of many international car companies. According to market data, the global installed capacity of NCM811 batteries increased by 276% in the first half of 2021 compared with the same period last year. The positive proportion of high nickel in overseas markets rose to 38% . The high nickel battery increases the energy density greatly, effectively increases the vehicle endurance ability, and after the positive electrode material use proportion adjustment, reduces the battery cost, in is advantageous to the battery enterprise, the vehicle enterprise and the terminal market, therefore, high-nickel batteries have gradually become the mainstream of the overseas market battery line. With the increase of the installed capacity of high nickel battery, it leads the growth of the raw material production enterprises. Like domestic raw materials enterprises, starting this year, the export volume of high nickel series raw materials has increased significantly, NI83, NI88, NI90 have become the main export products, and higher nickel content of NI95 has completed product-related certification, is expected to enter the volume production phase in the short term.

Overseas battery companies have already laid out high nickel battery routes, such as Korean based companies Lg new energy, SKI, and Samsung, which have already mass produced high nickel batteries and continue to invest in developing batteries with higher nickel content and even cobalt free materials. In this development trend, overseas head battery companies are actively expanding production of high nickel series batteries, will drive the high nickel positive electrode materials and nickel ore demand. 02. Nickel, Nickel, Nickel, Nickel, Nickel, Nickel, Nickel, Nickel, Nickel, Nickel, Nickel, Nickel, Nickel, Nickel, Nickel, Nickel, Nickel, Nickel, Nickel, Nickel, Nickel, Nickel. Density 8.9 G/CM, melting point 1455 °C, boiling point 2730 °C. Nickel is a silvery white metal, in the air is easy to be air oxidation, the surface of some black oxide film, so people often see the color of nickel hair. Nickel is hard, has good ductility, magnetism and corrosion resistance, and can be highly polished. Nickel is also abundant in the earth’s crust. It exists in nature in the form of nickel silicate ore or sulfur, arsenic and nickel compounds. Nickel is often used in the manufacture of stainless steel, alloy structural steel and other steel fields, electroplating, high nickel-based alloys and batteries, widely used in aircraft, radar and other military manufacturing, civil machinery manufacturing and electroplating industry.

Physical Properties of nickel nickel is a silvery white metal with good mechanical strength and ductility. Insoluble in water, acid and Alkali corrosion resistance is very strong, but easily soluble in dilute nitric acid and aqua regia. High temperature resistance, melting point 1455 °C, boiling point 2730 °C. The density is 8.902 G/CM. At room temperature, nickel forms a dense oxide film on the surface of the chemical property in moist air, which turns black and prevents the bulk metal from further oxidation. Organic acids, hydrochloric acid, sulfuric acid and alkaline solutions etch nickel very slowly. Nickel dissolves slowly in dilute nitric acid. Fuming nitric acid passivates the nickel surface and provides corrosion resistance. Nickel, like platinum and palladium, can absorb a large amount of hydrogen during passivation. The smaller the particle size, the greater the absorption. The important salts of nickel are nickel sulfate and nickel chloride. Similar to iron and cobalt, it is stable to water and air at room temperature and can resist alkaline corrosion. Therefore, a nickel crucible can be used to melt alkaline materials in the laboratory. Nickel is soluble in dilute acid. Unlike iron, cobalt and nickel react strongly with concentrated nitric acid and slowly with dilute nitric acid.

03. The history of nickel the history of nickel plays an important role in the development of human material civilization. Because of the similar melting point of nickel and iron, nickel was mistaken as a good iron by the ancients. In ancient times, China, Egypt and the Babylonians used high nickel content of meteoric iron objects, and because nickel does not rust, also known as Peru indigenous silver. As early as 235 BC, China began to use nickel minerals to make coins, and copper nickel alloy in 200 BC was invented and used by our ancient people. At the 1751, Stockholm based Alex Fredrik Cronstedt studied a new metal called nickeline. He thought it contained copper, but what he extracted was a new metal that was announced at the 1754 and named nickel. Alloys of the metals cobalt, arsenic and copper present as trace contaminants in the extraction process, which was mistaken by many chemists until 1775’s pure nickel was produced by Torbern Bergman, which confirmed that it was an element. In 1952 it was reported that animals had nickel in their bodies, and later it was suggested that nickel was necessary for mammals, said micronutrient, a psychologist at the University of California, Berkeley. Studies on nickel nutrition and metabolism have been carried out since 1975.

04 The development of nickel industry in recent years, the production and consumption of nickel in the world are relatively stable, the supply and demand of nickel market in the world mainly changes with the development of stainless steel industry, and with the increase of the application of nickel in stainless steel industry, great progress has been made in ferronickel smelting technology, and the output of high grade ferronickel has been greatly increased. The major nickel resource countries are Russia, Canada, New Caledonia, Indonesia, Australia and Cuba, which together account for about 80% of the world’s nickel production and exports. Nickel smelting is concentrated in Russia, Japan, Canada, Australia, Norway, China, New Caledonia, the United Kingdom, South Africa and Finland. The major nickel consumers and major producers of stainless steel are Japan, the United States, Germany, Russia, Italy, France and South Korea. Of the major nickel-consuming countries, only Russia is a nickel resource country, while the rest have little nickel to mine and rely mainly on imports of nickel concentrates and other primary-processed nickel products. With the continuous consumption of nickel resources and the decrease of nickel reserves, it has become an important task for the nickel industry to find and exploit new nickel ore rationally and increase the development of nickel resource recycling industry. China is currently the largest producer and consumer of nickel and iron in the world. With the continuous development of economy and iron and steel industry, the demand for nickel resources is increasing, but at the same time, the output of nickel mine is also increasing, gradually resulting in the current global nickel market oversupply of the grim situation.In the domestic stainless steel production, ferronickel as the production raw material, its use proportion will increase year by year, the pure nickel use assumes the decline tendency. As China’s nickel industry continues to develop, problems also arise. For example, most of the nickel ores are of low grade, the ratio of open pit mining is very small, the recoverable reserves are even less, the mining and smelting technologies are relatively backward, and there is still a big gap with the advanced technologies in the world, mining and smelting costs remain high, which shows that China’s nickel industry still has a lot of room for development. Recent developments in the nickel market in 2014, global nickel prices rose 12 percent despite the poor economic performance of some developed countries. At one point in May 2014, lunel’s cash settlement price rose to $19,434 a tonne, but fell again in the fourth quarter to $15,765 a tonne in October as eurozone steel producers cut production, related economic problems and inflationary pressures. At the same time, lse inventories have gradually climbed to a new high of more than 385,000 tonnes at the end of October. Despite low nickel prices and oversupply in the market, new nickel plants continue to appear because producers believe the global economy will recover. At the same time, global output rose to a record high in Austenitic stainless steel, with China accounting for more than half of that.

And demand for nickel-containing superalloys is still rising, especially in the aviation and power sectors. In January 2014, the Indonesian government issued a ban on the export of nickel ore in an attempt to boost domestic production of ferronickel and nickel-containing pig iron. In May 2014, Norilsk, the world’s largest nickel producer, said it would sell assets in Australia, Botswana and South Africa to focus on its core business in Russia. 05 with the development of economic construction and iron and steel industry, nickel is widely used as an alloy element, among which stainless steel accounts for more than half of the global nickel consumption, therefore, the development of reclaimed nickel industry is very important.

Reclaimed nickel, also known as nickel scrap. About 99% of its raw materials are from stainless steel, ultra-heat-resistant alloys and batteries in various forms of nickel-containing waste. The sources of nickel-containing wastes are mainly “New wastes”from stainless steel processing and “Old wastes”from stainless steel scrap. Industry experts estimate that between 4.4 million and 4.6 million tons of nickel waste are collected each year, of which nearly 350,000 tons are nickel, a quarter of the total demand for nickel. As one of the most valuable Non-ferrous metal, nickel resource can not only protect the environment, but also avoid the loss of precious nickel caused by landfill, so that nickel resource can be used more fully and effectively. At the same time, it also drives the development of the resource recycling industry. The consumption of nickel-containing wastes in industry can thus reduce the cost of raw materials by 5 to 10 per cent. Recycling levels are higher in Europe than in the Americas and Asia. The United States, Japan and other developed countries to carry out strict classification of nickel secondary resources recovery, recovery rate of more than 80% . Since nickel is almost always used in the form of alloy products, it is seldom recycled in the form of pure metal. Worldwide, stainless steel accounts for 61% of the nickel consumption structure, and Chinese stainless steel nickel accounts for 82% of the total nickel consumption.

At home and abroad on the recycling of stainless steel scrap are very important, this industry has become an independent cycle. There are 4-5 international nickel scrap processing plants in the world to ensure the collection of nickel scrap from all over the world. Most of the nickel scrap comes from stainless steel in old factories, machinery and consumer goods. The supply of nickel in China is composed of two parts, one is the supply of newly-produced nickel concentrate, which accounts for 72.9% , the other is the supply of regenerated nickel, which accounts for 27.1% . This shows that the development of the regenerated nickel industry in China is still relatively backward, but it also shows that there is a huge space for its development, the development direction of national nickel recycling industry is scale, specialization and environmental protection. Domestic high-temperature Alloy, electroplating, battery, recycling copper electrolysis and other industries of nickel scrap annual output has reached more than 50,000 tons (in nickel) , but the domestic recovery of nickel scrap is relatively small. In addition to direct recovery and utilization of high temperature alloy, electroplating, battery and other industries, a number of markets have been formed to promote the recovery and utilization of waste nickel. According to the survey, at the peak of nickel prices, domestic recovery of miscellaneous nickel can reach 15,000 tons (metal) above. But since then with the decline of nickel prices and nickel-containing pig iron to replace some of the stainless steel scrap, domestic nickel recovery showed a downward trend.

At the same time, there are still some problems in the development of reclaimed nickel in China, such as the imperfect recovery system and the low degree of centralized and large-scale treatment of domestic renewable nickel resources, in view of the above problems, it is suggested that the state should regulate the recycling of renewable resources in the mainland, including used nickel resources, it is proposed to strengthen the administrative management system, set up pilot enterprises for waste secondary batteries and production of scrap materials, and support a number of enterprises that meet the requirements of environmental protection and have “Higher”utilization technologies and processes, engaged in the recycling of renewable resources. 

Source: Timbers Online

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