Nickel: 7 Things You Should Know About The Newly Discovered Mineral Resource

Nigeria has confirmed the discovery of an unusual nickel in small balls up to 3mm in diameter of a high purity in shallow soils in what could be the surface expression of a much bigger hard-rock nickel field.


The nickel balls, rumoured to grade better than 90 per cent nickel and thought to be a world first given their widespread distribution, offer the potential for early cashflow from a simple and low-cost screening operation to fund a full assessment of the find that has exploration circles buzzing.

A private mining syndicate made potential “world class and highly unusual” Nickel discovery in Nigeria.

According to the report, the private mining syndicate is reportedly headed by Hugh Morgan, an Australian businessman and former CEO of Western Mining Corporation.

Here are 7 things we know about Nickel, the world class discovery that may replace crude oil...

Location:

Discovered in Dangoma, a small farming town about 160km northeast located in the North-West state of Kaduna.

- The Philippines, Indonesia, Russia, Canada and Australia are the world's largest producers of nickel, as reported recently by US Geological Survey.

- Nickel is a chemical element with symbol Ni and atomic number 28. It is a silvery-white lustrous metal with a slight golden tinge. Nickel belongs to the transition metals and is hard and ductile

Uses:

- Nickel materials are good because - compared with other materials - they offer better corrosion resistance, better toughness, better strength at high and low temperatures, and a range of special magnetic and electronic properties.

- Nickel metal is used to provide hard-wearing decorative and engineering coatings as 'nickel-plating' or 'electroless nickel coating' or 'electroforming'. When used with a top layer of chromium, it is popularly known as 'chrome-plating'. When done in combination with silicon carbide it is known as composite plating.

- It is an essential part of several rechargeable battery systems used in electronics, power tools, transport and emergency power supply. Most important today are nickel-metal hydride (NiMH).

Economic potential:

- Nickel-containing materials play a major role in our everyday lives – food preparation equipment, mobile phones, medical equipment, transport, buildings, power generation – the list is almost endless.

- Nickel is of considerable economic and strategic importance to many countries, as can be appreciated from the wide diversity of end-use industries which it serves. It is also traded on the London Metal Exchange.

Nigeria Bulletin