Manganese Ferroalloys of Russia
Abstract
Manganese is an important strategic metal. The main consumer of manganese is iron and steel industry. Due to its importance in steel manufacturing, manganese has the first position among ferroalloys. The world output of manganese ferroalloys is around 1% of the total steel output. After the USSR collapsed, Russia has been left without manganese ore reserves. At present, Russia uses an imported ore to smelt only high-carbon ferromanganese and iron-silicon-manganese alloy in limited quantity. Mineral reserves of manganese ores in Russia is quite large: manganese ore reserves averages 230,000 metric tons (around 2% of the world reserves) and estimated resources – more than one billion tons. The quality of the Russian ores is lower than the one from the other main producing countries. The average content of manganese in the Russian ores fluctuates from 9 to 23%. Domestic ores contain high quantity of harmful impurities, first of all phosphorus (0.2–0.8%). The mineral reserves of manganese ores in Russia is based on carbonate ores with a share of over 77%. A problem to advance the establishment of domestic manganese mining base is an extremely important issue from the perspective of economic security. A string of questions ought to be addressed concerning the concentration of lean manganese ores, development of effective technologies to smelt manganese ferroalloys from the concentrates obtained after the concentration and creation of improved techniques to dephosphorize manganese concentrates. While producing manganese ferroalloys from ore to finished alloy, about 50% of the manganese extracted from strata is wasted in the form of by-products such as concentration sludges, slags, residue of small fractions of raw materials and finished products, sludges of smelting processes and dusts. In case of the by-products processing and following usage, it would be possible not only to reduce consumption of raw materials but also to increase manufacturing effectiveness and to minimize environmental impact.
Keywords: ferromanganese, dephosphorization, ore, reserves
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