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A brief history of nickel

Nickel is abundant in the earth's crust, and it exists in nature in the form of nickel silicate ore or sulfur, arsenic and nickel compounds, which plays a very important role in the development of human society. At first, nickel was mistaken for iron in ancient times because of its close melting point. China, Egypt, babylonians and other historical countries have a tradition of using nickel meteorite to make utensils, because nickel does not rust, and was once regarded by the indigenous Peruvians as silver. In 235 BC, China began to use nickel to make coins. Copper and nickel alloy, or white copper, was invented and used by ancient Chinese people as early as 200 BC, until 1751, when Alex Fredrik Cronstedt, working in Stockholm, Switzerland, studied red arsenic-nickel ore and extracted it. And named it nickel.

Later in the 19th century, Garnier made nickel-sulfur by reducing silicomagnesite, so that the nickel in the ore could be concentrated together, and then calcined to desulphurize it, turning it into nickel oxide, which is now the main component of laterite nickel, and finally reducing the solid nickel oxide with carbon to make the nickel metal. Although metal nickel from hot day ore smelting, but constrained by the level of productivity, the nickel ore mining cost is rather high, resulting in people's emphasis on the use of nickel conditions do not produce enough, therefore, pure nickel for quite a long time very slow development, until the arrival of the industrial revolution, nickel gradually entered the stage of development of human history.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the world produced only a few thousand tons of nickel. After the First World War, especially after the middle of the 20th century, with the advent of world peace, nickel and nickel-based alloy for its good comprehensive performance more and more attention of modern people. Over the next century, the demand for nickel increased dramatically. Later, with the continuous development and progress of science and technology, people began to be able to use the reducing agent to roast sulfide ore oxide reduction to produce crude nickel, and then through the electrolytic process to produce pure nickel.

By the middle of the 20th century, a variety of nickel-based superalloys began to enter the field of vision. By adding various trace elements into pure nickel, nickel base alloy products with better comprehensive properties and wider practicability can be obtained. In this aspect of research, European and American developed countries first take the lead. Intersecting developed countries although China started slowly, but the development is relatively fast, also independently developed a variety of nickel based superalloys. With the development of pure nickel and nickel base alloy, many excellent nickel base alloy products have been developed and widely used. At this point, the demand for nickel increased rapidly. At present, in the world of all kinds of non-ferrous metals annual consumption and consumption, nickel annual consumption and consumption of the fifth, only next to non-ferrous metals copper, aluminum, lead, zinc. Therefore, nickel and nickel-based alloys have more and more influence on the use of materials and lifestyle of modern people.
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