Plating (9% of primary nickel use)
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Primary nickel products have been specifically developed to enable electroplating operations to operate
efficiently and to produce a high quality product. The efficiency of plating solutions is very sensitive to
some chemical impurities. For both of these reasons, almost all plating processes use primary (virgin) nickel
either as metal or as salts.
There are a few exceptions. Scrap or rejected electroformed products can be close to pure nickel. These have a high resale value, as they are a valuable source of nickel for remelting by foundries or for dissolution by nickel salts manufacturers. During conventional electroplating, it is common to get nickel deposits on parts of the equipment other than the object being plated. These pieces, which are essentially pure nickel, can be loaded into a basket and re-used in place of primary nickel.
Spent plating solutions and nickel-containing residues from plating tanks can be crystallized and dried. The dry residues can then be blended with other materials to produce a feed for primary nickel smelters. Specialist merchants are responsible for the sourcing and blending process.
In theory, it is possible to reverse the plating process and re-dissolve nickel from a plated object. In
practice this is not usually economic and is seldom done. (Hence the high priority put on initial quality.)
Reject plated items are usually sold for scrap -- sometimes the nickel content will be taken into account in
deciding how the scrap is used (e.g., for blending into stainless steel scrap). Often it is not and the item
becomes part of the scrap loop of the substrate material (steel, brass or plastic).
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