Releasing the hidden potential of nickel laterites

by Uwe König, Thursday, 9th December 2021

How many electric cars did you pass on your way to work this week?

With an estimated 2.5 million electric and hybrid cars sold worldwide in 2020, these vehicles are an increasingly common sight on the road or at charging stations. Perhaps you even have one yourself. And, as the options available expand from just cars to buses, lorries, and perhaps even ships and planes, this technology presents an exciting opportunity to make transport more sustainable.

The need for new nickel sources

But producing all these electric vehicles uses a significant amount of our world’s metals – especially nickel sulfate, an essential ingredient for EV batteries. In fact, besides steel manufacturing, battery manufacturing is the fastest-growing application for nickel mining worldwide. What’s more, these batteries increasingly need higher and higher energy densities – requiring manufacturers to increase the nickel content and lower the cobalt content. As a result, by 2025, demand for nickel for batteries is expected to increase by approximately 15% of the world’s current total nickel production.

Given this demand, resources of sulfide nickel deposits – which are the traditional source of nickel for batteries and currently account for about 60% of global nickel production – are fast depleting. The good news is that we have another source available: nickel laterites. In fact, laterites are the source for up to 70% of our world’s nickel. And, with our need for nickel only increasing, mining companies will soon need to source more of it from laterites – even for non-traditional applications such as battery production.

Mineralogical monitoring matters

Nickel laterites are typically lower-grade than nickel sulfides, making it especially important to monitor the properties of the ore, ore blends, final products, and waste material when mining them. In particular, the mineralogical composition can affect the nickel ore’s lifetime, melting temperature, acidity, and reducibility, as well as the quality of the slag produced and the metal recovery rates.

As such, being able to perform frequent, fast mineralogical monitoring during nickel laterite mining, blending, and processing is highly valuable. This kind of monitoring enables manufacturers to optimize ore blends, minimize furnace use and energy costs, prevent erosion from corrosive slag, reduce metal loss in waste material, and boost recovery rates for both nickel and cobalt. In this way, it helps increase the production of high-grade nickel products.

XRD and PFTNA: An ideal match for nickel mining

But how can companies carry out this monitoring? X-ray diffraction (XRD) is the answer! This fast, reliable, powerful technique can monitor mineralogical composition at every stage of nickel laterite mining. Today’s XRD detectors carry out highly accurate analysis in the lab in as little as five minutes – making them suitable for process control and research environments alike. What’s more, XRD lets you run multiple evaluation methods simultaneously, so you can quickly react to changing conditions in the plant or mine.

XRD can also be complemented with other technologies to monitor elemental composition, such as X-ray fluorescence (XRF) or online pulsed fast and thermal neutron activation (PFTNA) technology. PFTNA, in particular, helps control the nickel grade (Fe/Ni ratio), basicity index (MgO/SiO2), and moisture levels of the material entering the kiln before transportation. This enables manufacturers to ensure high-quality nickel grades, as well as removing moisture to enable energy savings.

Toward a future of electric transport with Malvern Panalytical

Even better, Malvern Panalytical offers its very own benchtop X-ray diffractometer! Aeris Minerals delivers the speed and quality of a full-size system – we recently used it to investigate the mineralogy of 40 nickel samples. And, by adding our CNA3 PFTNA cross-belt analyzer – available in a version designed for nickel – you can also enjoy real-time ore quality control. In this way, we’re helping make nickel mining more efficient than ever – and contributing to an exciting future of electric transport.

To find out more about Aeris Minerals CNA3, or our other mining solutions, please visit our dedicated webpages, scientific paper or contact Uwe König.

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