Talk:Lateritic nickel ore deposits

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I removed the last sentence about the pig iron process. Nickel recovered as pure nickel from hydrometallurgical processes is not necessarily used "in stainless steel anyway." Despite the very non-technical wording, quite a lot of nickel is used as nickel metal, or in nickel-based alloys (which are not stainless steel) such as Monels, Hastelloys, Inconels, etc. But I think the point is missed on this so-called pig iron process. Aren't the chinese simply using existing blast furnaces (originally designed to produce pig iron) as a vessel for making ferronickel? I'm not so sure it's very economic in terms of fuel usage, just convenient. It's analogous to the RKEF process for ferronickel, but in a single furnace. By the way, the article fails to mention the RKEF process for ferronickel, which is quite common in Brazil, etc. Also, the original article missed the Caron process (Brazil, Cuba, and Australia), which is an ammonia leach process. BSMet94 (talk) 05:22, 21 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I also did some general editing on the intro paragraphs of the extraction section. Someone needs to come up with refereces if you want to cite "less than half" of the production cost, and 25% of the capital cost, and lower technical risk on the heap leach section. Where did you get that information? "Lower technical risk" is a pretty vague statement, also. Perhaps you could cite some heap leach nickel laterite operations???BSMet94 (talk) 05:22, 21 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]