POTENCY OF MAKING THE CHEMICAL MANGANESE DIOXIDE (CMD) FROM EAST NUSA TENGGARA PYROLUSITE

Chemical manganese dioxide has not yet commercially developed in Indonesia. It is supplied by import sector. The fact that Indonesia has manganese resources as many as 60,893,820 tons is inconsistent with above condition. Research on CMD making employed pyrolusite as the raw material with size of - 100+150 mesh. The material was then reacted with sulfuric acid 6% and various concentration of molasses as reductant from 10, 20, 30, 50 and 100 %. The manganese sulfate leachate was then purified using sodium hydroxide and then filtered to have a nonferrous manganese sulfate. The Mn was precipitated from manganese sulfate using sodium bicarbonate. The precipitated manganese carbonate was then calcined at 600°C by injecting the air at various flow rates (100, 200, 300, 400 cc/minute) and different calcination time (2, 3, 4 hours) to get manganese dioxide. The best extracted Mn reached 97.58% using 50% of molasses as a reductant. The precipitation of manganese carbonate had produced sodium carbonate as an impurity. The calcination had not yet changed the manganese carbonate into manganese dioxide due to extremely high calcination temperature