Those impurities are driving me crazy...

Manganese (Mn) use in batteries is not new at all. It has been used in primary batteries, non-rechargeable batteries in electronics, (i.e. AA/AAA type) since the early 1960’s. ?Natural Manganese Dioxide (MnO2) and Zinc formed the basic “ingredients” and therefore it feels just about normal that Manganese can, and has been used in lithium batteries also.

The big difference is that, instead of “natural” manganese dioxide, cleaned up of course, a chemically processed and highly purified version of manganese is used in lithium-ion (and also many sodium battery chemistries) these days.

The purification and production of these highly specialised manganese products are very technical, requires high capital investment CAPEX to establish a production facility. The operational costs are much higher than the cost of the input product, which is typically a high grade manganese mineral ore, with a minimum of 43% Mn contents.

That’s what the top ?producers in the world use anyway.

You see, the lower the grade, the more impurities (other elements) require removal and separation from the manganese.

The purity standards are difficult for most people to really understand. For high performance lithium batteries, the typical allowance for non-Manganese particles is under 100 parts per million.

Let me try to explain:

Imagine you have a 20 litre container full of water. ?Add 1 teaspoon of salt. Mix well.

You have just added approximately 100 parts per million “impurities”.

So what are the battery grade Manganese products being used in batteries?

There are currently 3 different battery grade manganese products used in Lithium batteries:

?1. Manganese sulphate (monohydrate),

formula: MnSO4.H2O, containing ~32.5% Manganese.

2. TriManganese TetraOxide,

formula: Mn3O4, containing ~72% Manganese.

3. Electrolytic Manganese Dioxide,

formula MnO2, containing ~63% Manganese.

The percentages are important to understand the market prices, because battery cathode manufacturers are interested in what the cost is of the usable manganese. Additional substances, like -sulphate, causes by-products/waste, which need to be disposed of responsibly, and this adds operational cost and often is a hassle.?

The lowest cost battery manganese product has traditionally been High Purity Manganese Sulphate Monohydrate, HPMSM, and this is also where China has an incredible 98% market share…

or maybe we should say absolute market dominance globally, because I think they want all of it, 100%.

The current market price is about (USD) $698 per metric tonne (Excl. VAT, ex-works in China).

?Next in line, very closely in price per Mn-content, ?is TriManganese TetraOxide, which is at ~$1,639 /mt.

and followed by Electrolytic Manganese Dioxide (EMD) at ~$1,985 /mt.

Even though these prices seem far apart, they are not, if you calculate the price per Manganese contents. See the graph below to see the relative price/Mn%.

?All these products are produced directly from imported manganese ores, with Gabon being the preferred source from a Chinese perspective, based on the elemental composition of the manganese ore from that region.

The impurities to be removed from the manganese ore, have a direct impact on the cost of the processing of the manganese feedstock. Certain impurities require high cost chemicals to purify the manganese during the hydrometallurgical processing. The profile of impurities in a manganese feedstock is therefore very important.

So there are 2 parameters: what is the volume of impurities (everything not Mn, so 100% minus Mn grade) and also exactly what are they.

So although it may be “possible” to produce high purity battery grade manganese products from almost any Manganese resource, even as low as 10% Manganese contents, it becomes impossible to have acceptable operational costs, due to the extremely high processing costs, due to the impurities, in total and type of.?

This is one of the reasons why some Manganese projects are praying for $4000 / mt market prices for battery grade manganese sulphate, which would be possible if there are severe supply shortages, or if some of the companies producing high-end ultra-luxury EV’s, are willing to pay 3x to 5x the near future market prices.

All possibly, but highly unlikely,

well… the supply shortages anyway, as it’s not in the Asian battery makers’ best interest to have high battery material prices, so China will simply stay ahead of the curve permanently, and ensure over-capacity and -supply,

because they can.

Next week I will go through the different manganese containing battery chemistries and which manganese products are preferred for each of the different battery chemistries.

Cheers for now,

Magnus.

https://www.dhirubhai.net/in/magnus-bekker/