THE ECONOMIC WEEKLY Ferromanganese and Manganese Ore for Export G. C. Mitter W O R L D shortage, of steel focuses our attention not only on the question of augmenting the capa- city of steel works but also on the need for wider search for raw mate- rials necessary for the manufacture of steel. Manganese is an impor- tant ancillary metal for the manu- facture of steel in which it is used in the form of ferro-manganese, an alloy of manganese and iron. Steel manufacturers have to use manga- nese in greater quantities than any other metal except iron itself. No matter how the steel is made, by Bessemer, electric furnace or the open hearth process, 11 to 14 lbs. of manganese in the form of ferro- manganese go into every ton of steel. Ferro-manganese is normally pro- duced in blast furnaces and in fact the same blast furnace that produces pig iron is often used at the fag end of its life for the production of ferro-manganese from the ores of manganese and iron. Ferro-manganese was first manu- factured at Jamshedpur between 1915 and 191 7. The Kulti factory of the Bengal Iron Company started its manufacture in 1917 and con- tinued till the end of the last war when production at Kulti ceased and was taken up at Jamshedpur. The indigenous production of ferro-manganese was all consumed by the steel producers of the coun- try. It was only during World War II that a small consignment of about 4500 tons of ferro-manga- nese was exported to USA. The exportable quality of ferro- manganese has to satisfy the speci- fication for the phosphorous content which should be below 0.3 per cent. It is the difficulty of keeping the phosphorous content within this limit that now stands in the way of de- veloping the manufacture and ex- port of this product. Ferro-man- (Continued from page 76) complex, reciprocally, interacting community like this big village, the emergence of leaders, of social sanc- tions and of new social forms of ex- pression of opinion cannot be ac- complished by act of parliament, however well thought out. It is an organic process, the product of a multitude of thrusts and stresses. In Fatchpura, as in villages all over Rajasthan, the process is going on apace. ganese produced in India has a man- ganese content of 0.5 to 0.6 per cent. The high percentage of phosphorous in the indigenous ore is due to the high ash content of Indian coke which is responsible for as much as 0.4 of the 0.5 to 0.6 per cent phos- phorous content of the ferro-man- ganese manufactured in this country. Because of our inability to produce ferro-manganese of the quality ac- ceptable abroad, we are content to- day to export large quantities of raw manganese ore at very low prices to the steel producing coun- tries outside India, It is possible to manufacture ex- portable quality of ferro-manganese in two ways. Firstly, by the instal- lation of one or two blast furnaces and using low-phosphorous manga- nese ore and low-phosphorous coke. But as India's resources in low- phosphorous manganese ore and coal are limited, it is not a feasible pro- position to produce a large quantity of ferro-manganese of this quality by this method. The other alternative is to employ electric furnace for the production of exportable quality of ferro-man- ganese. It has been argued that the cost of ferro-manganese produced by the electric furnace method is likely to be considerably higher than that of the blast furnaces product. But it is to be remembered that the electric furnace product, because of its purity, is mostly used in the manu- facture of high quality low-carbon steels. The indigenous demand for the electric furnace product will gradually grow in this country. It also fetches a higher price. The standard requirement for the production of 78 to 80 per cent ferro-manganese by this method is to maintain in the ore a ratio of 6 to 1 of manganese to iron. That is, with 48 per cent manganese ore, there should not be over 8 per cent iron; otherwise there will be too much iron in the alloy and only a substandard grade of ferro-manga- nese will be produced. For the production of one ton of ferro-manganese from an ore con- taining 48 per cent manganese and 8 per cent iron, the charge should be approximately the following: 4800 lbs. manganese ore; 1400 lbs. of coke, 15 per cent ash; and 800 to 1400 lbs. of limestone. 77 January a6, 1952 A standard electric furnace may be used for smelting. The US Bureau of Mines at Salt Lake City uses a similar type and the following table gives an approximate idea of the cost of one ton of ferro-manga- nese in the USA 4800 lbs. of manganese ore at $3500 per net ton ' $ 84.20 1200 lbs. of limestone at $3.50 per ton $ 2.10 1400 lbs. of coke & coke breeze mixture at $12,00 per ton $ 8.40 75 lbs. of electrodes at .$.07 per pound $ 5.25 3000 K W H at $.oo3$ per K W H * $ 9.00 3 man hours per ton $ 4.50 Maintenance and repairs $ 1.00 Depreciations, taxes etc. $ 2.00 Total cost for the pro- duction of one ton $116.45 Attention of both industrialists and of the Government is particu- larly drawn to the place that should be given to the production of ferro- manganese in any scheme for produc- ing processed articles for export. The production of ferro-manganese will benefit the country by virtue of the technical experience it will bring, the large labour force it will employ and the substantial foreign exchange it will earn, particularly from the hard currency areas. At the. last session of the Science Congress in Calcutta, the production of ferro-manganese formed the sub- ject of an interesting symposium. The Tatas, it appeared, have deve- loped a method of producing ferro- manganese with low phosphorus con- tent by using manganese obtained by treatment of the ore with iron in an electric furnace where the pig iron formed takes away most of the phosphorus, leaving the manganese with little or no phosphorus in it. This experiment, if it proves suc- cessful on a commercial scale, will solve the problem of preparing ferro- manganese of exportable quality even Iron manganese ore of poor qua- lity, Poor quality manganese ore is now wasted as it" has no export market or industrial uses. Consider- ing that in order to obtain manga- nese ore of value, 80 per cent of the ore is wasted for its poor quality, the experiments at Jamshed- pur will be watched with consider- able interest, if it is extended to such poor quality ore and succeeds in using the latter for the production of low-phosphorus ferro-manganese.