AN EMPIRE METAL

Hokitika Guardian, 28 March 1929, Page 2

AN EMPIRE METAL

THE PHENOMENAL PROGRESS OF NTCRBSL. . w v, ■ ■j'- &&& (By A. E. Tomlinson).' 'rb\<oj Tn a community of the vast ext'epir; of tho British Empire it is natural.’ that there should be a wonderful richness and variety of natural resources. In several raw materials, for 'instance, th e Empire can claim if not an absolute monopoly at least an overwhelming preponderance of production. Nickel is a case in point. The Sudbury district of Ontario, Canada, produces more than 80 per cent of the total world output of nickel, a figure which promises to impio\o to ninety per cent in the not very distant future. 4 There is a great deal of romance in the rise of this Empire metal, as it may now truly lie called. events have directed public attention to its importance. The first was the surprising development of th e rich (Frood mine whose lower levels revealed a totally unexpected richness of .nickel-copper ores; the second was the recent amalagamation of the two leading nickel companies, (the International Nickel and the Mond Nickel) to form the International Nickel Company of Canada, whos© capital at current market prices is in the neighbourhood of £200,000,000.

Part of the romance lies in the phenomenal advance of nickel from a minor to a foremost place in the world of modern metals.

Less than fifty years ago the world consumption of nickel was no moie than 500 tons. By 1922 this had risen to nearly 15,000, by 1923 to 25,(W0. From 1926 there was a tremendous jump and to-day the wprld is consuming at no less a rate than 50,000 tons of nickel a year.

Moreover there is no immediate stop to this amazing expansion in sight. In fact, new uses are discovered almost faster than the metal can be produced. This advance is due to the fact that nickel is pre-eminently the metal of modern man. It is the metal of the age of electricity, armoured slops, aeroplanes, motor-cars, wireless and of high pressure and high temperature processes. Every day reveals new and important uses for this once neglected metal and for the many alloys. To-day a complete account of the diverse uses of nickel and its alloys in modern industrial processes--en-gineering, chemistry, transport and so on—would fill a volume. Moreover, once metallurgists began to think in terms of nickel not only did they achieve great advances but they also revealed tremendous un-thought-of potentialities for the future. There are several processes of obtaining pure or nearly pure .nickel, the best known of which are the Mond and the electrolytic. Both these processes are the product of modern scientific research and invention, and they could no more have been conceived by primitive or mediaeval man than could the modem uses and rapid development of nickel. The qualities which render nickel ao invaluable 'in moderti industrial processes are its toughness, its resistance to corrosion from air, water, alkalis and dilute acids, its fairly high electrical resistance and above all the ease with which it forms alloys with other metals, particularly steel. • The metal itself is used for such highly modern purposes as sparkingplugs, radio apparatus, vacuum cleaners and electrical equipment. H is also in demand for cooking and household which have a handsome appearance, are easily cleaned and are virtually indestructible. The pure metal has been employed as a substitute for silver in the coinage of several nations, though an alloy, copper nickel,' has been even more widely used for this purposg| More than 21,000 tons of comA nickel coins have been minted put intV) circulation world since the war. "j Its alloys with steel ® “\ u . most valuable of cal tonsile djksly

uses in foundry practice and other channels and are enabling chemical engineers and inventors to solve thermal problems which had baffled them for • years. 'lt would require great space again tq deal with alloys of nickel and non(ferrous metals such as the various jpidely-used copper nickel alloys. Cupiramckel, for instance, is one of the snost ductile metals in commercial use land it is employed for condenser-tubes 'and in electrical engineering for resistance materials. It is familiar to anyone who lias bandied a rifle bullet, being the metal of silvery appearance which envelops the bullet. The nickel chomimn alloys again are highly important in electrical cn - gineering being unsurpassable 101 cables of various kinds. It uas due to their introduction that the extensive use of electrical heating appliances has become possible.

Two of the most modern uses of all must be montoned. In the construction of airships and of metal for aircraft generally, a nickel alloy of aluminium and other metals has now been perfected in Britain which is far superior to the metal employed in the original German Zeppelins. Lastly, finely divided nickel is employed as a “catalyst” in that' modern chemical process known as catalysis. A catalyst is a substance which enables a chemical action to take place without itself actually taking part m it, and the subject is still largely an unexplored one with tremendous potentialities for the future in the whole field of synthetic chemistry. Nickel as a catalyst is employed, for instance, in petroleum refining and tho synthesis of various oils and fats. We have not even touched on a score of the other use of nickel including it use in electro-plating and in storage cells for electrical batteries, but we have certainly shown that nickel is essentially a metal of modern progress.

With Canada now occupying such a preponderating position in the production of this highly important metal it is difficult to realise that less than 40 years ago the main source of nickel was a remote island in the Southern Pacific, New Caledonia, once used as a French convict settlement. The. present flourishing nickel district of Sudbury, Ontario, was at that time still largely wilderness bearing little signs of the industrialisation which 'was to come so swiftly. Copper deposits were being mined but the presence of nickel was 1 itie more than suspected, till a lucky accident revealed the possibility of the vast riches hidden underground. In the early eighties of last century whilst a railroad was being driven through the district a cutting in tho rock exposed rich ore deposits. Copper, however, was the great objective of the searchers at that time, and it was not until some years later that nickel, the metal which has now mado that region famous, was found to be present in large quantities. Even then it was only discovered because the copper smelters found it so difficult to deal with nickel containing ore and this led to further investigation. This element of accidental discovery and romance "was present also in the origin of the wonderful refining process on which the fortunes of the Mond Nickel Company have been 'founded. I>r Ludwig Mond, the world famous chemist and industrial-’ Ist, was conducting experiments at his great chemical works in Cheshire, with a view to obviating breakdown in certain nickel valves. From these experiments he made the totally unexpected discovery of nickel carbonyl, the gas which is formed when finely divided metallic nickel is brought into contact with carbon monoxide gas at a certain temperature. Dr Mond, being a man of great vision and tremendous energy, persevered with his experiments until finally he solved from this accidental discovery ..the complete process for refining from its ores, which and on which a been founded. < There the years Lcess was /V ; -. k >'• Liical diffifl