Stainless steel a real nickel success

Helping to prop up the price of nickel in 1988 and 1989 was the global demand for stainless steel, a material whose origins can be traced back more than 75 years. Nickel-containing stainless was reported to account for about 60% of total nickel consumption during those two boom years, during which the spot price of nickel on the LME topped US$10.80 per lb. The use of stainless steel is widespread, from cutlery and commercial kitchen ware to architectural applications.

While most people today might associate nickel with stainless steel, the first commercial stainless featured a predominantly chromium content. Three-quarters of a century later, chromium remains a common thread among the various types of stainless steel, which in reality is a family of alloys which employ a variety of elements.

Metallurgists had been experimenting with rust-resistant metals around the turn of the current century. Stainless steel’s rise to prominence, however, is generally attributed to the work undertaken by Englishman Harry Brearley, beginning in 1912, on rifle barrels. In 1914, the first stainless steel dinner knives appeared on the market in England, marking the start of a new industry.

Brearley’s contribution involved using both the correct amount of chromium and heat. At that same time in Germany, stainless steel experiments were under way involving an additional metal, nickel. Softer and more ductile, the German chromium-nickel-steel proved more suited to the manufacture of equipment for the then-growing chemical industry.

Today, more than 50 different grades of stainless have been developed for diverse uses in the chemical industry, pulp and paper production and nuclear and fossil fuel power plants. It is also used to clad the outsides of buildings and has become a fixture in the kitchens of fast-food outlets.

According to a publication from Inco, the world’s largest nickel producer, about 75% of all the stainless steel produced today in the non-communist world is nickel- containing (austenitic). Nickel lends strength, toughness, ductility and formability to stainless steel, while chromium provides the corrosion resistance.

Demand for barites in the oil- well drilling market, which accounts for 80-90% of total production of the minerals, will likely remain at four million tonnes per year for the foreseeable future, Roskill Information Services of London reports.

That level of demand is more than one-third less than its 1980 level.

Faced with contracting demand for their products, the majority of the world’s barites producers are operating at less than full capacity, and several leading companies have been forced to merge or rationalize their operations, says the research firm.

Through its reliance on the world oil market, the barites industry felt the effects of the wide fluctuations in oil prices during the 1980s. For example, in 1983, OPEC cut oil prices and introduced production quotas, resulting in over-production by many of its members, a drop in the oil price and a decline in drilling activity.

In 1986, oil prices plunged below US$10 per barrel, slashing drilling activity by almost 30%. A small recovery in world drilling activity occurred toward the end of 1988, but overall demand for barites in drilling fluids has remained steady at around the 4-million-tonne-per- year level.

In the oil and gas industry, barites are used as a weighting agent in drilling muds needed to counteract high pressures confined by the substrata. Other uses include as fillers and extenders in paint, rubber and paper manufacturing, and as a flux agent in glass production.

Canada is a relatively small barite producer. Major world producers of the mineral include China, the Soviet Union, the U.S., Morocco, Mexico and India.

Current demand in the U.S. for hard and superhard materials is about 664 million lb., worth slightly less than US$2 billion, writes high- technology research firm World Information Technologies of Northport, N.Y., in a new study.

Total consumption of these materials — including tool steels, ceramics, cemented carbides, cubic boron nitride, diamonds, hard coatings and diamond films — increased by almost 5% annually in volume, and slightly more than 3% annually in value, between 1985 and 1989. (Prices were falling during this period.)

Demand in the U.S. is forecast to grow another 12% in volume and 17% in value between now and 1994. Kennametal is the leading producer of hard and superhard materials serving the U.S. market, says the research company.