E.V.s and Nickel.

well, everything and nickel really - your cutlery probably has it as part of the stainless steel mix as well as about half the kitchen sinks in the land (only about 10% of the common knife and fork alloy is nickel, but there is an awful  lot of it about https://nickelinstitute.org/en/about-nickel-and-its-applications/stainless-steel/ )

At the moment, making batteries of one sort or another is about 5% of the world annual nickel production, but that is set to rise. (Page 16 of this PDF reckoned it was 3.7% in 2018, but it is rising )

Pity that quite a lot of it comes from a country currently waging a war in the east of Europe whose economy we do not wish to supplement, and we are not really sure how much of the stuff is out there to be mined in other places. Possibly quite a lot, but not quickly. Canada has some large deposits in hard to reach places.

It is also used in another common re-chargeable battery, the NiMH - Nickel metal hydride - the modern replacement for the Nickel Cadmium cells in emergancy lights and so on.

In the Lithium cells used in the modern EV, the nickel is needed to make the cathode foils - ~ 30% or so of a Nickel Manganese Cobalt (NMC) cathode and more like 80% of a Nickel Cobalt Aluminum (NCA) cathodes.

Then of course in both of those is also cobalt, which  is not that cheap/readily available a metal either, and much that also comes from a rather dodgy part of Africa, where wars and violence seem to be endemic.

In may ways we trade off  a single source of problems with the fossil fuels to a new single source of problems with the transition metals.

Mike

An increasing proportion of new vehicles are being fitted with Lithium Iron Phosphate batteries now.  LiFePO batteries have a slightly lower capacity than LiIon, but don't need so much in the way of rare metals (iron is as common as muck), and are less flammable too.

I wonder what the scrap value of "nickel silver" is (I think it's actually a cupro-nickel alloy).  There must be a lot of old nickel silver cutlery still around.

I wonder what the scrap value of "nickel silver" is (I think it's actually a cupro-nickel alloy).  There must be a lot of old nickel silver cutlery still around.

well according to https://www.britannica.com/technology/nickel-silver it is typically 18% Nickel, mostly copper and some zinc.

Nickel is abou £30 per kilo for pure scrap.

http://coinapps.com/nickel/scrap/calculator/

Copper is about £9 kilo for pure scrap

so you will get about £13 per kilo for your old nickel silver. Unless really badly damaged it will be worth more to leave your Nickel Silver and EPNS  intact.

Mike