Nickel
Nickel, with a symbol of Ni, is a silvery shiny, metallic element with an atomic number of 28. Nickel is classified as toxic and carcinogenic to humans. It can be hammered into thin sheets, which means it is malleable. Nickel, iron and cobalt are the only three elements known to be ferro-magnetic. Of the three, nickel is the least magnetic. When all three ferro-magnetic metals are alloyed together, an unusually strong magnet is created. This alloy conducts heat and electricity fairly well, but is not as good a conductor as pure silver or copper.
In 1751, Axel Fredrik Cronstedt of Sweden attempted to extract copper from the mineral niccolite and to his surprise got a silvery-white metal, instead of the copper. He named the new metal nickel after the mineral name of niccolite. This was the first discovery of nickel in the western world, but an alloy of copper, nickel and zinc - paitung or paktong - was used in China as far back as 235 BC. for utensils and other metal ware.
The presence of elemental nickel in iron-nickel meteorites distinguishes them from rocks or minerals produced in the Earth. The amount of nickel in these meteorites ranges from 5% to almost 20%. When they are sliced and etched with acid, a pattern of intergrown crystals is revealed. This is called a widmanstatten pattern. This texture of the iron-nickel meteorites suggests they cooled and crystallized very, very slowly deep inside asteroids.
Contents
Name
| Previous Element: Cobalt Next Element: Copper |
| |
| Physical Properties | ||
|---|---|---|
| Color | silvery-white | |
| Phase at Room Temp. | solid | |
| Density (g/cm3) | 8.908 | |
| Hardness (Mohs) | --- | |
|
Melting Point (K) |
1726.2 | |
|
Boiling Point (K) |
3193 | |
| Heat of Fusion (kJ/mol) | 17.6 | |
| Heat of Vaporization (kJ/mol) | 372 | |
| Heat of Atomization (kJ/mol) | 430 | |
| Thermal Conductivity (J/m sec K) | 90.9 | |
| Electrical Conductivity (1/mohm cm) | 146.199 | |
| Source | Sulfides, oxide/silicates | |
| Atomic Properties | ||
| Electron Configuration | [Ar]4s23d8 | |
|
Number of Isotopes |
31 (5 natural) | |
| Electron Affinity (kJ/mol) | 111.5 | |
| First Ionization Energy (kJ/mol) | 736.7 | |
| Second Ionization Energy (kJ/mol) | 1752.9 | |
| Third Ionization Energy (kJ/mol) | 3393.4 | |
| Electronegativity | 1.91 | |
| Polarizability (Å3) | 6.8 | |
| Atomic Weight | 58.69 | |
| Atomic Volume (cm3/mol) | 6.6 | |
| Ionic Radius2- (pm) | --- | |
| Ionic Radius1- (pm) | --- | |
| Atomic Radius (pm) | 124 | |
| Ionic Radius1+ (pm) | --- | |
| Ionic Radius2+ (pm) | 83 | |
| Ionic Radius3+ (pm) | 72 | |
| Common Oxidation Numbers | +2 | |
| Other Oxid. Numbers | -1, +1, +3, +4 | |
| Abundance | ||
| In Earth's Crust (mg/kg) | 8.40×101 | |
| In Earth's Ocean (mg/L) | 5.60×10-4 | |
| In Human Body (%) | 0.00002% | |
| Regulatory / Health | ||
| CAS Number | 7440-02-0 | |
| OSHA Permissible Exposure Limit (PEL) | TWA: 1 mg/m3 | |
| OSHA PEL Vacated 1989 | TWA: 1 mg/m3 | |
|
NIOSH Recommended Exposure Limit (REL) |
TWA: 0.015 mg/m3 IDLH: 10 mg/m3 | |
|
Sources: |
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From very early times nickel-bearing minerals, such as niccolite, were mixed with glass to create green glass. This was called kupfernickel which means Devil’s Copper. When nickel was extracted from niccolite, the mineral name was a logical source of the name for the element nickel.
Sources
Although today it is not profitable to mine nickel in the USA, small amounts of by-product nickel are being recovered from copper and palladium-platinum ores in the Western United States.
Approximately 87,000 tons of nickel is recovered annually by recycling stainless steel and other nickel-iron alloys. This represents about 39% of the nickel used each year.
It is estimated that there is about 140 million tons of nickel available in identified deposits. Eighty-four million tons, or 60 percent of the total available nickel is in laterite deposits. A deposit in which rain and surface water (Surface runoff of water) leached nickel-rich rock and concentrated the nickel at or near the surface of the Earth is a laterite deposit. Nickel sulfide deposits contain the remaining forty percent (56 million tons).
Demand for nickel in the United States is much higher than what recycled nickel can provide, so nickel is imported into the country. Most of the imported nickel comes from Canada (40%), while the rest is imported from Norway (13%), Russia (12%), Australia (10%), and various other nations (25%).
Trace amounts of nickel are important to a number of species of animals. It plays a role, along with iron, in the transport of oxygen in the blood. Nickel deficiency has been shown to reduce iron uptake in young pigs.
Nickel is also important to the proper function of some enzymes in both plants and animals. Experiments on rats have shown that insufficient nickel leads to liver damage. Nickel is involved in the transmission of genetic code - DNA, RNA, etc. it is also present in certain enzymes that metabolize sugar. Oats and other whole grains are an excellent source of nickel.
Scientists who study seismic waves from earthquakes, have determined that the core of the Earth consists of a liquid outer core and a solid inner core composed of an iron-nickel mixture.
Environmental pathways
Nickel may be released to the environment as an air pollutant, water pollutant or soil contaminant. As an air pollutant Nickel can emanate as part of the stack emissions of large furnaces used to make alloys or from power plants and trash incinerators. The nickel that is emitted from stacks of power plants attaches to small particles of dust that settle to the ground or are precipitated from the atmosphere by rain or snow. If the nickel is attached to minute particulate matter, it can take more than a month to settle out of the air.
Nickel compounds are classified as human carcinogens based on increased respiratory cancer risks observed in epidemiological studies.(National Toxicology Program, 2016) This fact is increasingly important, since a rapidly growing pathways is soaring use in lithium ion batteries, which presently are not routinely recycled, but end up in landfills.
Nickel can also be released in industrial wastewater. Much of the nickel released into the environment ends up in soil or sediment where it can strongly attach to particles containing iron or manganese. Under acidic conditions, nickel is more mobile in soil and can seep into groundwater. Nickel does not appear to concentrate in fish. Studies show that some plants can take up and accumulate nickel. However, nickel does not seem to accumulate in small terrestrial animals, which are living on land that has been treated with nickel-containing sludge.
Nickel is a significant component of lithium ion batteries, a major component in electric vehicle batteries. As of 2021 there is no requirement or economical method of recycling the toxic heavy metals from the lithiun ion battery. Consequently large amounts of nickel end up in open pit e-waste landfills (usually in underdeveloped countries such as Bangladesh), where children frequently play in the toxic waste.
Uses
In the United States, large amounts of nickel (42% of consumption in 2001) were used in the specialty steel industry for stainless steel and related alloys. In 1913, Harry Brearly, an English scientist, was the first to produced stainless steel, when he accidentally discovered that the addition of chromium to steel makes the steel resistant to staining. Today, stainless steel also contains some molybdenum, titanium and nickel, to increase its resistance to corrosion.
Thirty-eight percent of annual nickel use is in nonferrous alloys (or mixed with metals other than steel) andsuperalloys (metal mixtures designed to withstand extremely high temperatures and/or pressures, or to have high electrical conductivity). Nickel is used as a coating on other metals to slow down corrosion. Nickel coatings accounts for 14% of nickel use.
The remaining 6% of the annual nickel use is for a variety of purposes including the production of coins, nickel-cadmium and nickel-metal hydride batteries; as a catalyst for certain chemical reactions; and, as a colorant, nickel is added to glass to give it a green color. The U.S. 5-cent piece is called a "nickel" because it only contains 25% nickel. The other 75% is copper.
Rechargeable nickel-hydride batteries are widely used for cellular phones, video cameras, and other electronic devices. Nickel-cadmium batteries are used primarily to power cordless tools and appliances.
Substitutes and Alternative Sources
Manganese crusts and nodules on the ocean floor could be a valuable source of nickel someday. These deposits contain manganese and other metal ions, such as nickel. Some deposits appear to have formed when superhot liquids from deep sea volcanoes came in contact with the very cold deep ocean water causing the metals to precipitate and collect on the ocean floor. Other deposits far from subduction zones (Plate tectonics) may have formed when microorganisms in the sea water accelerated the precipitation of dissolved iron and manganese. Today, it is too expensive to mine the deposits, but as the surface nickel deposits are used up, the value of nickel may increase and make it profitable to retrieve these manganese nodules.
There are a number of materials that could be used in place of nickel, but generally, these substitutes are more expensive than nickel and/or less effective. Aluminum, plastics or coated steel could be used in place of stainless steel in some situations. Titanium can be used in place of nickel to make some superalloys.
References
- National Toxicology Program (2016). "Report on Carcinogens" Archived September 20, 2017, Wayback Machine, 14th ed. Research Triangle Park, NC: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Public Health Service.
- Common Minerals and Their Uses, Mineral Information Institute.
- More than 170 Mineral Photographs, Mineral Information Institute.
| Disclaimer: This article contains information that was originally published by the Mineral Information Institute. Topic editors and authors for the Encyclopedia of Earth have edited its content and added new information. The use of information from the Mineral Information Institute should not be construed as support for or endorsement by that organization for any new information added by EoE personnel, or for any editing of the original content. |
