Nickel is an important component of stainless steel and a wide range of applications which are critical for the transition to clean energies including electric vehicle batteries. Awaruite is a native nickel–iron alloy that has gained interest as a possible new economic source of nickel. In the last decades, there have been discoveries of awaruite, mostly with more significant amounts of nickel sulphides, that have demonstrated the potential for awaruite to contribute to the economics of a deposit. This study is focused on the very large Baptiste deposit in central British Columbia, Canada where awaruite is the primary nickel mineral. Most of published data on awaruite are focused on geology, and important fundamental physiochemical properties have still not been determined. These properties are fundamental for the set-up of a flowsheet that will enable its large-scale processing. The limited information available of this nickel–iron alloy can be complemented with the available information of a synthetic alloy with the same elemental composition. The synthetic awaruite alloy has demonstrated remarkable magnetic properties, and based on those properties, it was named permalloy. In this study, physicochemical properties of native and synthetic awaruite were measured including chemical composition, crystallographic structure, and magnetic properties. The native awaruite composition from the Baptiste deposit averages 77.3 % nickel, 21.0 % iron, 1.1 % cobalt and 0.6 % copper. Natural and synthetic awaruite have the same crystallographic characteristics and similar ferromagnetic behaviour. The measured initial volumetric magnetic susceptibility for native awaruite was 14.4 and the saturation magnetization was 750 kA/m. Awaruite has the potential to be concentrated in a unique and valuable nickel concentrate of distinctive characteristics including its very high nickel content, which lowers both the downstream costs and the carbon intensity. Furthermore, the negligible content of sulphur and penalty trace elements, such as mercury, antimony, and arsenic in a potential awaruite concentrate, minimizes the costs of refining it. The physicochemical data in this study provides information to reliably set up a mineral processing flowsheet, which is discussed in this work.

镍是不锈钢的重要组成部分，其应用范围广泛，对于向清洁能源（包括电动汽车电池）的过渡至关重要。Awaruite 是一种原生镍铁合金，作为一种可能的新镍经济来源引起了人们的兴趣。在过去的几十年中，已经发现了 araruite，其中大部分含有更大量的硫化镍，这证明了 araruite 对矿床经济性的贡献的潜力。这项研究的重点是加拿大不列颠哥伦比亚省中部的一个非常大的 Baptiste 矿床，该矿床是主要的镍矿。大部分已发表的关于 awaruite 的数据都集中在地质学上，重要的基本物理化学性质仍未确定。这些特性对于设置能够实现大规模处理的流程至关重要。这种镍铁合金的可用信息有限，可以用具有相同元素组成的合成合金的可用信息来补充。合成的紫晶合金具有显着的磁性，基于这些特性，它被命名为坡莫合金。在这项研究中，测量了天然和合成珍珠岩的物理化学性质，包括化学成分、晶体结构和磁性。Baptiste 矿床的原生阿瓦鲁石成分平均为 77.3% 的镍、21.0% 的铁、1.1% 的钴和 0.6% 的铜。天然和合成的珍珠岩具有相同的晶体学特征和相似的铁磁行为。 千安/米。Awaruite 有可能被浓缩成一种独特且有价值的镍精矿，其特点包括其非常高的镍含量，从而降低了下游成本和碳强度。此外，潜在的精矿中硫和微量元素（如汞、锑和砷）的含量可忽略不计，从而最大限度地降低了精炼成本。本研究中的物理化学数据为可靠地建立矿物加工流程提供了信息，本工作将对此进行讨论。