Chromium and nickel are always mentioned together. The most famous example is the iron, chromium, and nickel alloy we often talk about - stainless steel. But in terms of content, the content of nickel in stainless steel is higher than that of chromium. There are also many famous stories about the discovery, industrial use, and mining of nickel as a metal - which is no less impressive than chromium. According to chemistry books, the element nickel was discovered by the Swede Alex Frederick Kronstadt in 1751. But in fact, humans began to mine and use nickel in an earlier period. For example, ancient my country began to manufacture "white copper", a copper alloy with nickel as an added element, but my country did not call this element nickel.
In the periodic table, nickel ranks 28th. Nickel is a metal element that is nearly silvery white, hard, ductile, and ferromagnetic. It can be highly polished and corrosion-resistant. Its density is 8.902 g/cm3, melting point is 1453℃, boiling point is 2732℃, etc. Nickel has good ductility and medium hardness. It has magnetism and good plasticity. Nickel also has good corrosion resistance and can be highly polished. Nickel can burn in pure oxygen and emit dazzling white light. In addition, it can also burn in chlorine and fluorine.
Nickel is widely used in both military and civilian fields. In the civilian field, many things in daily life contain nickel. For example, many foreign coins, glasses frames, electroplated items, metal watch straps, belt buckles, etc. In the military field, the use of nickel is even more extensive. "World Military" magazine said "the body of the weapon", and mentioned chromium, of course, also mentioned nickel.
The biggest role of nickel is to make various alloy steels, and it is often used together with chromium-this is why chromium and nickel are often mentioned together.
The most common alloy steel that we all often talk about is of course stainless steel, which is an alloy of iron, chromium and nickel. In fact, the content of nickel in stainless steel is higher than that of chromium. Then, among the weapons made of stainless steel, the most famous one is the fast-flying MiG-25 fighter, whose fuselage is made of stainless steel.
Using nickel to make alloy steel is not just stainless steel, and its use is by no means that simple. Nickel can dissolve into ferrite in alloy steel without forming carbides, which can greatly enhance the strength of alloy steel, especially the ability of steel to resist gunfire. Therefore, alloy steel containing nickel is mainly used to make "armor".
Experiments show that steel containing 3% nickel has an extraordinary ability to resist shell explosion. Therefore, nickel steel was used to make armor belts for main battleships as soon as it came out. In 1890, American Harvey made Harvey steel armor, and in 1893, Germans invented Krupp armor. The smelting processes of these armors are similar: placing carbon on the surface of nickel steel plate and heating it to 1200℃ for two to three weeks can greatly enhance the hardness and strength of nickel steel. This is called carburizing process. Therefore, advanced scientific and technological achievements were first applied to the military. At that time, the main battleships of Britain, the United States, Germany, France, Japan, Russia and other countries all used nickel steel with carburizing process. These steel armors played a huge role in the Russo-Japanese War, the Spanish-American War, and the naval battles of World War I.
Two types of weapons that often use armor are naval ships and tank armored vehicles. In the era of cast turrets and hulls, tanks still have to rely on homogeneous steel armor-although they are constantly thickening, they still can't withstand armor-piercing and armor-piercing shells. That homogeneous steel armor is basically made of chromium-nickel alloy steel, because homogeneous steel armor has problems even if it is constantly thickened, so composite armor is made, but no matter what the material filled between the cast turret and the composite armor is-the basic armor should still be chromium-nickel alloy steel. In addition to armor, alloy steel containing nickel in other materials also has an important position. For example, the gun steel mentioned when talking about chromium contains both chromium and nickel. Then it is worth mentioning that the steel used to build submarines is also alloy steel or nickel steel containing chromium and nickel.
If submarines and submersibles want to dive deep, it is best to use titanium alloys to build them. Although titanium is abundant in the earth's crust, it is very scattered and the smelting and processing of titanium alloys are very difficult, so it is difficult to promote it in large quantities in submarines and submersibles. Using nickel alloy steel or nickel steel to build submarines and submersibles can also achieve relatively good results, and the cost and processing difficulty are greatly reduced. Now there is martensitic high-strength nickel steel that has been studied and tested, and it can also be used to build deep-sea submersibles. Not only is the cost lower than titanium alloy, but it can also be built completely by casting, and it does not have to be welded like titanium alloys, which reduces the cost and processing difficulty. In addition to alloy steel, nickel is often used as the main material to make alloys, which is nickel-based alloys. Nickel-based alloys generally refer to alloy series containing more than 50% nickel, plus chromium, titanium, aluminum and other metal elements. Of course, using such expensive metals to make alloys requires them to work in a very harsh environment, that is, working in a high-temperature environment. Commonly used alloy steels are made of iron as the main material, that is, iron-based alloys. Although steel has a huge output, it is not very resistant to high temperatures. Iron-based alloys can only work at medium temperatures below 800°C. If the temperature is too high, the performance will be greatly reduced. However, nickel-based alloys still have high strength and good resistance to oxidation and gas corrosion in harsh environments of 1000°C.
Nickel-based alloys are generally used in places with very high temperatures and harsh environments, such as the aerospace field. Especially the engines of jet aircraft (whether turbojet engines or turbofan engines) and the engines of launch vehicles, space shuttles and missiles (of course, they are all rocket engines). The working environment in these places must be above 1000°C, which iron-based alloys cannot withstand and nickel-based alloys must be used.
In addition, nickel is also widely used in electronic products, batteries, metal parts electroplating and other fields. The content of nickel in the earth's crust is about 0.018%, which is still relatively rich, richer than the chromium mentioned above. Nickel is mainly found in two types of nickel ores-nickel oxide ore accounts for 60% of the world's proven reserves, and the remaining 40% is nickel sulfide ore.
Nickel oxide ore is mainly distributed in tropical and subtropical regions, also known as laterite nickel ore. It is easy to mine and develop, and its smelting does not pollute the environment. Australia has the largest amount of nickel oxide ore resources, with more than 19 million tons. The nickel ore in Russia and my country is mainly nickel sulfide ore. Russia has about 7.9 million tons of nickel ore, ranking fourth in the world. my country has about 3 million tons, ranking only ninth in the world. Speaking of nickel ore in Russia, we have to talk about a famous city, the heavily polluted Norilsk City near the Arctic Ocean. The Russian city of Norilsk has a large population, but it is very closed to the outside world and can only rely on airplanes and short-term water transportation in a year. It is also close to the Arctic Ocean and the climate is very cold. But this place can become a city and is very important because there are rich mineral resources underground, the most important of which is nickel ore. The rich underground mineral resources have created huge wealth for this city and of course the entire Russia, but it has also brought serious environmental problems.
