Manganese is a tough, gray-white metal primarily utilized as an alloying agent, particularly in the production of steel. Discover more about its properties and applications here.
Used in many industries—especially steelmaking—and for a wide variety of applications, manganese is a transition metal that’s often combined with other metals like steel, aluminum, copper, and different alloys to pass on its impressive properties. FlagShips material offerings include all of these type of alloys and we have manganese to thank for many of them.
This durable metal is used as an alloying element or chemical compound in things like batteries and electronics. In this article, we’ll discuss all of manganese’s properties, benefits, applications, uses, and its pros and cons.
What is Manganese?
First things first: what exactly is manganese? Well, in simple terms, it’s a metal and chemical element. Its symbol on the periodic table is Mn, and its atomic number is 25. Manganese is hard and grayish-white in appearance, and it usually comes mixed with other elements. It's a reactive metal, so it easily forms compounds with other elements.
To get a little more technical, manganese is actually the 12th most plentiful element in the Earth’s crust, making up around 0.1% of it. This natural element is found in certain types of rocks and over 300 different minerals, mainly pyrolusite and romanechite, which both have manganese dioxide (MnO2) in them. It can also be found in iron and oxygen and as lumps on the seafloor called manganese nodules.
There’s currently about 630 million metric tons of manganese in reserve around the world. Manganese is often compared to iron because of its strength, although manganese is harder and more brittle. We’ll go over the exact physical and chemical properties of manganese a little further down, but let’s first take a quick look at its history.
A Brief History of Manganese
Manganese was discovered as an element in 1774 by a Swedish chemist called Carl Wilhelm Scheele. Later that year, Scheele’s assistant, Johan Gottlieb Gahn, managed to isolate manganese for the first time in history by figuring out that manganese dioxide could be reduced with carbon. This led to the element being thoroughly researched and experimented with. Just before the turn of the century, the United Kingdom nabbed patents for the use of manganese in steelmaking.
Use of the material started gaining traction in the early 1800s, and in 1841, as the steel industry was really taking off, a pig iron with large amounts of manganese in it started being produced on an industrial scale. In 1875, ferromanganese (an alloy with around 65% manganese content) started being commercially produced, and the rest is history. Nowadays, manganese is still an important and much-used metal in steel production and many other applications, including batteries, and even fertilizers.
Making Manganese
To make manganese, manganese ore needs to first be collected. Mining is often done in open manganese-rich pits. There are also ways to collect manganese from seabeds but these methods aren’t very cost-effective. After it’s collected, it needs to be extracted and refined before it can be used.
There are three main manganese production processes—hydrometallurgical, electrolytic, and smelting. Hydrometallurgical processes use chemical reactions to extract manganese–one of these is leaching. This method uses an acid or alkali to dissolve the manganese from the source, which is then treated to extract the manganese.
Electrolytic processes involve passing an electric current through a liquid that has manganese ions in it. The manganese then collects on the electrodes as a metal with a high purity level. Smelting processes give us manganese alloys like ferromanganese and silicomanganese. With smelting, manganese oxides are heated in a furnace with other materials like carbon or aluminum.
Properties of Manganese
Manganese has an array of attractive properties, both physical and chemical, that make it a no-brainer for industrial use. Let’s take a look at some of these.
Physical Properties of Manganese
Pure manganese metal is typically found in ingot or block form and has a relatively high density that makes it heavy with a high mass per unit volume. It’s harder than most other metals, but not as hard as diamond or some other minerals. Though it’s not magnetic in nature, it can become so when exposed to strong magnetic fields.
In terms of appearance, pure manganese is silvery-gray (kind of like steel or aluminum), but it can come in different distinct colors depending on which mineral it’s found in. These include pyrolusite (black or dark gray), manganite (usually black or dark brown, sometimes with a reddish tint), hausmannite (typically dark brown or black, sometimes reddish-brown), and braunite (black or dark brown). It’s also found in rhodonite, commonly used as a gemstone or decorative stone, which is pinkish red.
Below is a table with precise facts and figures on manganese’s physical properties.
Chemical Properties of Manganese
Manganese’s key chemical properties are its reactivity, valency, electronegativity, solubility, and complex formulation. With oxygen, manganese reacts to make manganese dioxide (MnO2), manganese trioxide (Mn2O3), manganese heptoxide (Mn2O7), and other oxides. In terms of valency, manganese can have charges of anywhere from -3 to +7 (the most common being +2, +3, +4, and +7).
Manganese has quite a high electronegativity, attracting electrons towards itself in chemical reactions. Depending on their specific properties, its compounds can be soluble or insoluble. For instance, manganese sulfate is highly soluble while the opposite can be said of manganese dioxide. Manganese can also form complex compounds with many different ligands, like water, ammonia, and some other organic molecules, giving the final form unique and useful properties.
Manganese Uses and Applications
Although it’s most commonly used in steelmaking, manganese’s uses and applications don’t end there. Thanks to its many perks and versatility, it’s used in the manufacturing of batteries, resistors, and aluminum alloys, like the many types that FlagShip offers. Here’s how:
Steel
Manganese is famed for its use in steelmaking (the largest global industrial use of the metal—an estimated 90%—is in this sector), so it’s only right that we start here. Used as an alloying element, adding manganese to steel not only improves the latter’s strength, hardness, wear-, and corrosion-resistance, but makes it less brittle, too. It also increases steel’s hardenability. In small amounts, manganese can also be added to steel to remove oxygen and replace iron sulfide (FeS) with manganese sulfide (MnS).
Depending on the properties needed in the final alloy, manganese can be added to various steel forms like ferromanganese, silicomanganese, and spiegeleisen. It’s one of the main components of high-strength low-alloy (HSLA) steel which is largely used in construction and transportation. In construction, where impact resistance and durability are a priority, manganese steel (a.k.a. Hadfield steel) is chosen for making mining equipment, railroad tracks, and other machinery, as it’s high in manganese and austenitic.
Batteries
Manganese is commonly used to make batteries, especially alkaline, zinc-carbon, and lithium-ion ones. Manganese dioxide is typically used in alkaline battery cathodes, while in zinc-carbon batteries it’s used as a depolarizer. Along with other metals, like nickel and cobalt, lithium-manganese oxide is used to form the cathodes for lithium-ion batteries. Due to its high-purity outcome, electrolytic processes are most often used for battery production (as well as electronics).
Resistors
Certain types of resistors (electrical components designed to limit the current flow in a circuit) are made using manganese. By mixing manganese dioxide with carbon, the resistance factor can be ramped up anywhere from a few ohms to many megaohms.
Aluminum Alloys
After steelmaking, perhaps the next most common use of manganese is in aluminum alloys. Aluminum with manganese makes for a strong, tough, and corrosion-resistant material, which is why it’s most often used in the automotive sector for things like engine blocks, transmission components, and other parts that need to be extra strong and durable.
Other Uses
In ceramics, manganese is often used as a pigment to stain clay in a variety of colors like black, brown, and purple. In addition, farmers and those in agriculture add manganese to their fertilizer as it has been proven to improve both the quality and size of crops, making them healthier and more resistant to diseases. It can also be used in water treatment for removing iron and hydrogen sulfide.
Sophia
Published Date: 2025/10/20
