Selective reduction of laterite nickel ore

Nickel is an important metal in the industry. To obtain nickel metal, the extraction process from nickel ore should be conducted. Recently, nickel ore resources from sulphide ore becomes rare which makes nickel laterite ore as the future of nickel extraction. Unlike sulphide nickel ore processing, laterite nickel ore processing requires higher processing energy through smelting. Therefore, a novel method to process laterite nickel ore using lower energy is needed. The novel method is done via direct reduction and magnetic separation. In laterite nickel processing by direct reduction, the challenges are to conduct selective reduction of nickel and to let iron unreduced. The addition of additive in the direct reduction process is needed to achieve this selective reduction. Additives used for the selective reduction includes Na₂SO₄, MgCl₂, CaSO₄, NaCl and CaCl₂·H₂O. This article will further review the role of additive used in selective reduction of laterite nickel ore and the current trends on selective reduction research.