Because the ores of nickel are easily mistaken for ores of silver, understanding of this metal and its use dates to relatively recent times. However, the unintentional use of nickel is ancient, and can be traced back as far as 3500 BC. Bronzes from what is now Syria had contained up to 2% nickel.[14] Further, there are Chinese manuscripts suggesting that "white copper" (cupronickel, known as baitung) was used there between 1700 and 1400 BC. This Paktong white copper was exported to Britain as early as the 17th century, but the nickel content of this alloy was not discovered until 1822.[15]
In medieval Germany, a red mineral was found in the Erzgebirge (Ore Mountains) which resembled copper ore. However, when miners were unable to extract any copper from it they blamed a mischievous sprite of German mythology, Nickel (similar to Old Nick) for besetting the copper. They called this ore Kupfernickel from the German Kupfer for copper.[16][17][18][19] This ore is now known to be nickeline or niccolite, a nickel arsenide. In 1751, Baron Axel Fredrik Cronstedt was attempting to extract copper from kupfernickel and obtained instead a white metal that he named after the spirit which had given its name to the mineral, nickel.[20] In modern German, Kupfernickel or Kupfer-Nickel designates the alloy cupronickel.
In the United States, the term "nickel" or "nick" was originally applied to the copper-nickel Indian cent coin introduced in 1859. Later, the name designated the three-cent coin introduced in 1865, and the following year the five-cent shield nickel appropriated the designation, which has remained ever since. Coins of pure nickel were first used in 1881 in Switzerland.[17][21]
After its discovery the only source for nickel was the rare Kupfernickel, but from 1824 on the nickel was obtained as byproduct of cobalt blue production. The first large scale producer of nickel was Norway, which exploited nickel rich pyrrhotite from 1848 on. The introduction of nickel in steel production in 1889 increased the demand for nickel and the nickel deposits of New Caledonia, which were discovered in 1865, provided most of the world's supply between 1875 and 1915. The discovery of the large deposits in the Sudbury Basin, Canada in 1883, in Norilsk-Talnakh, Russia in 1920 and in the Merensky Reef, South Africa in 1924 made large-scale production of nickel possible.[15]
Occurrence
The bulk of the nickel mined comes from two types of ore deposits. The first are laterites where the principal ore minerals are nickeliferous limonite: (Fe, Ni)O(OH) and garnierite (a hydrous nickel silicate): (Ni, Mg)3Si2O5(OH). The second are magmatic sulfide deposits where the principal ore mineral is pentlandite: (Ni, Fe)9S8.
In terms of supply, the Sudbury region of Ontario, Canada, produces about 30% of the world's supply of nickel. The Sudbury Basin deposit is theorized to have been created by a meteorite impact event early in the geologic history of Earth. Russia contains about 40% of the world's known resources at the Norilsk deposit in Siberia. The Russian mining company MMC Norilsk Nickel obtains the nickel and the associated palladium for world distribution. Other major deposits of nickel are found in New Caledonia, France, Australia, Cuba, and Indonesia. Deposits found in tropical areas typically consist of laterites which are produced by the intense weathering of ultramafic igneous rocks and the resulting secondary concentration of nickel bearing oxide and silicate minerals. Recently, a nickel deposit in western Turkey had been exploited, with this location being especially convenient for European smelters, steelmakers and factories. The one locality in the United States where nickel was commercially mined is Riddle, Oregon, where several square miles of nickel-bearing garnierite surface deposits are located. The mine closed in 1987.[22][23] In 2005, Russia was the largest producer of nickel with about one-fifth world share closely followed by Canada, Australia and Indonesia, as reported by the British Geological Survey.
Based on geophysical evidence, most of the nickel on Earth is postulated to be concentrated in the Earth's core. Kamacite and taenite are naturally occurring alloys of iron and nickel. For kamacite the alloy is usually in the proportion of 90:10 to 95:5 although impurities such as cobalt or carbon may be present, while for taenite the nickel content is between 20% and 65%. Kamacite and taenite occur in nickel-iron meteorites.
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