Nsutite is a manganese oxide

mineral In geology and mineralogy, a mineral or mineral species is, broadly speaking, a solid substance with a fairly well-defined chemical composition and a specific crystal structure that occurs naturally in pure form.John P. Rafferty, ed. (2011): Mi ...

with formula: ( Mn⁴⁺_1−xMn²⁺_x O_2-2x(O H)_2x where x = 0.06–0.07).http://www.webmineral.com/data/Nsutite.shtml Webmineral data It is found in most large

manganese Manganese is a chemical element; it has Symbol (chemistry), symbol Mn and atomic number 25. It is a hard, brittle, silvery metal, often found in minerals in combination with iron. Manganese was first isolated in the 1770s. It is a transition m ...

deposits and was first discovered in Nsuta,

Ghana Ghana, officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country in West Africa. It is situated along the Gulf of Guinea and the Atlantic Ocean to the south, and shares borders with Côte d’Ivoire to the west, Burkina Faso to the north, and Togo to t ...

. Since then, it has been found worldwide. Nsutite is a dull mineral with a

hardness In materials science, hardness (antonym: softness) is a measure of the resistance to plastic deformation, such as an indentation (over an area) or a scratch (linear), induced mechanically either by Pressing (metalworking), pressing or abrasion ...

of 6.5–8.5 and an average

specific gravity Relative density, also called specific gravity, is a dimensionless quantity defined as the ratio of the density (mass of a unit volume) of a substance to the density of a given reference material. Specific gravity for solids and liquids is nea ...

of 4.45. Nsutite has been used as a

cathode A cathode is the electrode from which a conventional current leaves a polarized electrical device such as a lead-acid battery. This definition can be recalled by using the mnemonic ''CCD'' for ''Cathode Current Departs''. Conventional curren ...

in zinc–carbon batteries, but synthetic manganese oxide is gradually replacing it.

References

Oxide minerals Manganese(II,IV) minerals Hexagonal minerals Minerals described in 1962 {{oxide-mineral-stub