Potassium Permanganate is an inorganic compound with the chemical formula KMnO4.
Furthermore, Potassium Permanganate is a purplish-black crystalline salt, that dissolves in water as K+ and MnO− 4, an intensely pink to purple solution.
CAS Number: 7722-64-7
EC Number: 231-760-3
Chemical formula: KMnO4
Molar mass: 158.034 g/mol
Appearance: Purplish-bronze-gray needles purple in solution
APPLICATIONS
Almost all applications of Potassium Permanganate exploit its oxidizing properties.
As a strong oxidant that does not generate toxic byproducts, Potassium Permanganate has many niche uses.
Medical uses of Potassium Permanganate:
Potassium Permanganate is used for a number of skin conditions.
This includes fungal infections of the foot, impetigo, pemphigus, superficial wounds, dermatitis, and tropical ulcers.
Potassium Permanganate is on the World Health Organization's List of Essential Medicines.
Water treatment:
Potassium Permanganate is used extensively in the water treatment industry.
Moreover, Potassium Permanganate is used as a regeneration chemical to remove iron and hydrogen sulfide (rotten egg smell) from well water via a "manganese greensand" filter.
Potassium Permanganate is also obtainable at pool supply stores and is used additionally to treat waste water.
Historically Potassium Permanganate was used to disinfect drinking water and can turn the water pink.
Potassium Permanganate currently finds application in the control of nuisance organisms such as zebra mussels in fresh water collection and treatment systems.
Synthesis of organic compounds:
A solution of Potassium Permanganate in water, in a volumetric flask.
A major application of Potassium Permanganate is as a reagent for the synthesis of organic compounds.
Significant amounts of Potassium Permanganate are required for the synthesis of ascorbic acid, chloramphenicol, saccharin, isonicotinic acid, and pyrazinoic acid.
Potassium Permanganate is used in qualitative organic analysis to test for the presence of unsaturation.
Potassium Permanganate is sometimes referred to as Baeyer's reagent after the German organic chemist Adolf von Baeyer.
The reagent is an alkaline solution of potassium permanganate.
Reaction with double or triple bonds (-C=C- or -C≡C-) causes the color to fade from purplish-pink to brown.
Aldehydes and formic acid (and formates) also give a positive test.
The test is antiquated.
Potassium Permanganate solution is a common thin layer chromatography stain for the detection of oxidizable functional groups, such as alcohols, aldehydes, alkenes, and ketones.
Such compounds result in a white to orange spot on TLC plates.
Analytical use:
Potassium Permanganate can be used to quantitatively determine the total oxidizable organic material in an aqueous sample.
The value determined is known as the permanganate value.
In analytical chemistry, a standardized aqueous solution of Potassium Permanganate is sometimes used as an oxidizing titrant for redox titrations (permanganometry).
As potassium permanganate is titrated, the solution becomes a light shade of purple, which darkens as excess of the titrant is added to the solution.
In a related way, Potassium Permanganate is used as a reagent to determine the Kappa number of wood pulp.
For the standardization of Potassium Permanganate solutions, reduction by oxalic acid is often used.
In agricultural chemistry, Potassium Permanganate is used for estimation of active carbon in soil.
Aqueous, acidic solutions of Potassium Permanganate are used to collect gaseous mercury in flue gas during stationary source emissions testing.
In histology, potassium permanganate was used as a bleaching agent.
Fruit preservation:
Potassium Permanganate extend storage time of bananas even at high temperatures.
This effect can be exploited by packing bananas in polyethylene together with potassium permanganate.
By removing ethylene by oxidation, the permanganate delays the ripening, increasing the fruit's shelf life up to 4 weeks without the need for refrigeration.
Survival kits:
Potassium permanganate is sometimes included in survival kits: as a hypergolic fire starter (when mixed with glycerol antifreeze from a car radiator; as a water sterilizer; and for creating distress signals on snow).
Fire service:
Potassium permanganate is added to "plastic sphere dispensers" to create backfires, burnouts, and controlled burns.
Polymer spheres resembling ping-pong balls containing small amounts of Potassium Permanganate are injected with ethylene glycol and projected towards the area where ignition is desired, where they spontaneously ignite seconds later.
Both handheld and helicopter- or boat-mounted plastic sphere dispensers are used.
Other uses of Potassium Permanganate:
Potassium permanganate is one of the principal chemicals used in the film and television industries to "age" props and set dressings.
Its ready conversion to brown MnO2 creates "hundred-year-old" or "ancient" looks on hessian cloth (burlap), ropes, timber, and glass.
Potassium Permanganate can be used to oxidize cocaine paste to purify it and increase its stability.
This led to the Drug Enforcement Administration launching Operation Purple in 2000, with the goal of monitoring the world supply of potassium permanganate; however, potassium permanganate derivatives and substitutes were soon used thereafter to avoid the operation.
Potassium permangate is used as an oxidizing agent in the synthesis of cocaine and methcathinone.
When applied to your skin, potassium permanganate kills germs by releasing oxygen when it meets compounds in your skin.
Potassium Permanganate also acts as an astringent, which is a drying agent.
Some of the conditions that potassium permanganate can help treat include:
Infected eczema:
If you have eczema with blisters, potassium permanganate can help to dry them out.
Open and blistering wounds:
Potassium permanganate is used as a wet dressing for wounds on your skin’s surface that are blistered or oozing pus.
Athlete’s foot and impetigo:
Potassium permanganate can help to treat both bacterial and fungal skin infections such as athlete’s foot and impetigo.
Some Uses of Potassium Permanganate:
Products that remove stains or discoloration of fabric (including color-safe bleaches) used in laundry
Products specifically used in a laboratory setting, e.g. laboratory diagnostics or consumables, solvents and reagents used in experiments or laboratory tests, etc.
Miscellaneous aquarium products for the maintenance of aquatic pets
Using Disinfectants or Biocides
Farming (Pesticides)
Sewer and Wastewater Treatment
Leather Tanning and Processing
Photographic Processing
Textiles (Printing, Dyeing, or Finishing)
Bleaching agents
Odor agents
Oxidizing agent
Potassium Permanganate is used to bleach textile fibers and skins, to dye wood and fabrics, to etch rubber and plastics, and to descale steel.
Besides, Potassium Permanganate is used in food processing, photography, leather tanning, and water purification.
Potassium Permanganate is used as an antiseptic, disinfectant, insecticide, miticide, and algaecide.
In addition, Potassium Permanganate is used occasionally for bulbs and rhizomes, and for dipping grafting knives and other tools.
Some important uses of Potassium Permanganate:
Bleaching resins, waxes, fats, oils, straw, cotton, silk and other fibers and chamois skins; dyeing wood brown; printing fabrics; washing carbon dioxide in manuf mineral waters; exterminating Oidium tuckeri; photography; tanning leathers; purifying water; with formaldehyde soln to expel formaldehyde gas for disinfecting; as an important reagent in analytical and synthetic organic chemistry.
Potassium permanganate is a powerful oxidizing agent and used a fixative, disinfectant, and as a reagent in organic synthesis.
A weak solution of Potassium permanganate applied to the affected skin is useful to help dry up a wet, exudative dermatoses such as:
Weeping eczema
Impetiginised eczema
Pompholyx
Blistering skin conditions such as pemphigoid.
Permanganate solution was a traditional treatment for fungal infections, but topical azoles (e.g. clotrimazole) and allylamines (e.g. terbinafine) are more effective and cosmetically acceptable.
Potassium permanganate crystals and concentrated solutions are caustic and can burn the skin.
More to that, Potassium Permanganate must only ever be applied in the dilute form to affected skin.
Always wear gloves when handling the concentrated solution or tablets.
The affected area can be immersed in the dilute solution for 10–20 mins, twice a day.
After the soak, the affected area can be patted dry with a paper towel, and treatments like topical steroid creams can then be applied.
Vaseline can be applied to the nails to prevent Potassium Permanganate causing brown staining.
Two to three days of applications will usually dry the weeping eruption, and the soaks can be discontinued before the skin becomes over dry.
If a foot or hand is affected, the diluted permanganate solution can be put into a bowl or bucket with a plastic bag liner that can be discarded after use.
If the weeping rash is widespread, permanganate can be diluted in bath water and the whole of the body immersed.
If the weeping area is more localised, diluted permanganate can be applied on a gauze soaked in diluted permanganate that has been gently squeezed to remove excess solution, and applied to the affected area for 20 minutes.
Potassium permanganate soaks are not suitable for dry skin conditions.
DESCRIPTION
Potassium permanganate is widely used in the chemical industry and laboratories as a strong oxidizing agent, and also as a medication for dermatitis, for cleaning wounds, and general disinfection.
Further to that, Potassium Permanganate is on the World Health Organization's List of Essential Medicines.
In 2000, worldwide production of Potassium Permanganate was estimated at 30,000 tons.
Potassium permanganate is the potassium salt of the tetrahedral transition metal oxo complex permanganate, in which four O2− ligands are bound to a manganese(VII) center.
Additionally, Potassium Permanganate forms orthorhombic crystals with constants: a = 910.5 pm, b = 572.0 pm, c = 742.5 pm.
The overall motif is similar to that for barium sulfate, with which it forms solid solutions.
In the solid (as in solution), each MnO−4 centre is tetrahedral.
The Mn–O distances are 1.62 Å.
The purplish-black color of solid potassium permanganate, and the intensely pink to purple color of its solutions, is caused by its permanganate anion, which gets its color from a strong charge-transfer absorption band caused by excitation of electrons from oxo ligand orbitals to empty orbitals of the manganese(VII) center.
Potassium permanganate is an oxidising agent with disinfectant, deodorising, and astringent properties.
The chemical formula of Potassium Permanganate is KMnO4.
Potassium Permanganate is sometimes called by its common name, Condy's crystals.
In its raw state, potassium permanganate is an odourless dark purple or almost black crystal or granular powder.
In 1659, Johann Rudolf Glauber fused a mixture of the mineral pyrolusite (manganese dioxide, MnO2) and potassium carbonate to obtain a material that, when dissolved in water, gave a green solution (potassium manganate) which slowly shifted to violet and then finally red.
The reaction that produced the color changes that Glauber observed in his solution of potassium permanganate and potassium manganate (K2MnO4) is now known as the "chemical chameleon".
This report represents the first description of the production of potassium permanganate.
Just under 200 years later, London chemist Henry Bollmann Condy had an interest in disinfectants; he found that fusing pyrolusite with sodium hydroxide (NaOH) and dissolving it in water produced a solution with disinfectant properties.
He patented this solution, and marketed it as 'Condy's Fluid'.
Although effective, the solution was not very stable.
This was overcome by using potassium hydroxide (KOH) rather than NaOH.
This was more stable, and had the advantage of easy conversion to the equally effective potassium permanganate crystals.
This crystalline material was known as 'Condy's crystals' or 'Condy's powder'.
Potassium permanganate was comparatively easy to manufacture, so Condy was subsequently forced to spend considerable time in litigation to stop competitors from marketing similar products.
Early photographers used Potassium Permanganate as a component of flash powder. It is now replaced with other oxidizers, due to the instability of permanganate mixtures.
Preparation of Potassium Permanganate:
Potassium permanganate is produced industrially from manganese dioxide, which also occurs as the mineral pyrolusite.
In 2000, worldwide production was estimated at 30,000 tonnes.
The MnO2 is fused with potassium hydroxide and heated in air or with another source of oxygen, like potassium nitrate or potassium chlorate.
This process gives potassium manganate:
2 MnO2 + 4 KOH + O2 → 2 K2MnO4 + 2 H2O
(With sodium hydroxide, the end product is not sodium manganate but an Mn(V) compound, which is one reason why the potassium permanganate is more commonly used than sodium permanganate.)
(Furthermore, the potassium salt crystallizes better.)
The potassium manganate is then converted into permanganate by electrolytic oxidation in alkaline media:
2 K2MnO4 + 2 H2O → 2 KMnO4 + 2 KOH + H2
Although of no commercial importance, potassium manganate can be oxidized by chlorine or by disproportionation under acidic conditions.
The chlorine oxidation reaction is:
2 K2MnO4 + Cl2 → 2 KMnO4 + 2 KCl
and the acid-induced disproportionation reaction may be written as:
3 K2MnO4 + 4 HCl → 2 KMnO4 + MnO2 + 2 H2O + 4 KCl
A weak acid such as carbonic acid is sufficient for this reaction:
3 K2MnO4 + 2 CO2 → 2 KMnO4 + 2 K2CO3 + MnO2
Permanganate salts may also be generated by treating a solution of Mn2+ ions with strong oxidants such as lead dioxide (PbO2), sodium bismuthate (NaBiO3), or peroxydisulfate.
Tests for the presence of manganese exploit the vivid violet color of permanganate produced by these reagents.
Potassium permanganate appears as a purplish colored crystalline solid. Potassium Permanganate is noncombustible but accelerates the burning of combustible material.
If the combustible material is finely divided the mixture may be explosive.
Contact with liquid combustible materials may result in spontaneous ignition.
Contact with sulfuric acid may cause fire or explosion.
Potassium Permanganate is used to make other chemicals and as a disinfectant.
Furthermore, Potassium permanganate is a chemical compound of manganese prepared from manganese dioxide.
Potassium Permanganate is a powerful oxidizing agent and used a fixative, disinfectant, and as a reagent in organic synthesis.
Besides, Potassium Permanganate is a naturally occurring metal with the symbol Mn and the atomic number 25.
Potassium Permanganate does not occur naturally in its pure form, but is found in many types of rocks in combination with other substances such as oxygen, sulfur, or chlorine.
Moreover, Potassium Permanganate is a highly oxidative, water-soluble compound with purple crystals, and a sweet taste.
PROPERTIES
Molecular Weight: 158.034
Hydrogen Bond Donor Count: 0
Hydrogen Bond Acceptor Count: 4
Rotatable Bond Count: 0
Exact Mass: 157.881408
Monoisotopic Mass: 157.881408
Topological Polar Surface Area: 74.3 Ų
Heavy Atom Count: 6
Formal Charge: 0
Complexity: 118
Isotope Atom Count: 0
Defined Atom Stereocenter Count: 0
Undefined Atom Stereocenter Count: 0
Defined Bond Stereocenter Count: 0
Undefined Bond Stereocenter Count: 0
Covalently-Bonded Unit Count: 2
Compound Is Canonicalized: Yes
FIRST AID
General advice:
First Aid responders should pay attention to self-protection and use the recommended protective clothing (chemical resistant gloves, splash protection).
If potential for exposure exists refer to safety sheet for specific personal protective equipment.
Inhalation:
Move person to fresh air; if effects occur, consult a physician.
Skin contact:
Remove material from skin immediately by washing with soap and plenty of water.
Remove contaminated clothing and shoes while washing.
Seek medical attention if irritation persists.
Wash clothing before reuse.
Discard items which cannot be decontaminated, including leather articles such as shoes, belts and watchbands.
Eye contact:
Flush eyes thoroughly with water for several minutes.
Remove contact lenses after the initial 1-2 minutes and continue flushing for several additional minutes.
If effects occur, consult a physician, preferably an ophthalmologist.
Ingestion:
If swallowed, seek medical attention.
Do not induce vomiting unless directed to do so by medical personnel.
Most important symptoms and effects, both acute and delayed:
Aside from the information found under Description of first aid measures (above), any additional important symptoms and effects are described in Safety sheet.
Indication of any immediate medical attention and special treatment needed:
Notes to physician:
No specific antidote.
Treatment of exposure should be directed at the control of symptoms and the clinical condition of the patient.
HANDLING AND STORAGE
Potassium permanganate poses risks as an oxidizer.
Contact with skin will result in a long lasting brown stain.
SYNONYMS
POTASSIUM PERMANGANATE
7722-64-7
Chameleon mineral
Potassium permanganate (KMnO4)
Potassium permanganate solution
potassium;permanganate
KMnO4
MFCD00011364
00OT1QX5U4
Permanganic acid (HMnO4), potassium salt (1:1)
Argucide
Walko Tablets
Algae-K
Solo San Soo
Pure Light E 2
Caswell No. 699
Diversey Diversol CXU
Hilco #88
Kaliumpermanganat [German]
Potassium permanganate [JAN]
Permanganato potasico
CCRIS 5561
Permanganato potasico [Spanish]
HSDB 1218
Diversey Diversol CX with Arodyne
Permanganate de potassium [French]
EINECS 231-760-3
UN1490
Potassio (permanganato di) [Italian]
Potassium (permanganate de) [French]
EPA Pesticide Chemical Code 068501
NSC 146182
UNII-00OT1QX5U4
CI 77755
AI3-52835
Kali permanganicum
Potassium permanganate [USP:JAN]
potasiumpermanganate
potassiumpermanganate
Icc 237 Disinfectant, Sanitizer, Destainer, and Deodorizer
EC 231-760-3
Potassium permanganate (TN)
Potassium permanganate, 97%
DTXSID2034839
KALI PERMANGANICUM [HPUS]
POTASSIUM PERMANGANATE [MI]
Potassium permanganate, ACS reagent
Potassium permanganate (JP17/USP)
POTASSIUM PERMANGANATE [HSDB]
POTASSIUM PERMANGANATE [VANDF]
Potassium permanganate, LR, >=99%
AKOS015833392
POTASSIUM PERMANGANATE [MART.]
Potassium permanganate solution, 2 mM
Potassium permanganate solution, 5 mM
DB13831
POTASSIUM PERMANGANATE [WHO-DD]
Potassium permanganate solution, 0.1 M
Potassium permanganate solution, 0.2 M
Potassium permanganate solution, 0.25N
Potassium permanganate, p.a., 99.0%
Potassium permanganate solution, 0.01 M
Potassium permanganate solution, 0.02 M
FT-0645093
P1742
POTASSIUM PERMANGANATE [EP MONOGRAPH]
POTASSIUM PERMANGANATE [USP MONOGRAPH]
D02053
Potassium permanganate [UN1490] [Oxidizer]
Potassium permanganate, ACS reagent, >=99.0%
Potassium permanganate, BioUltra, >=99.0% (RT)
Q190865
Potassium permanganate, 0.1N Standardized Solution
Potassium permanganate, SAJ first grade, >=99.3%
Potassium permanganate, tested according to Ph.Eur.
Potassium permanganate, JIS special grade, >=99.3%
Potassium permanganate, <=150 mum particle size, 97%
Potassium permanganate, meets USP testing specifications
Potassium permanganate, ACS reagent, >=99.0%, low in mercury
Potassium permanganate, low in mercury (max. 0,005 ppm Hg)
Potassium permanganate, p.a., ACS reagent, reag. ISO, 99.0%
Potassium permanganate, purum p.a., >=99.0% (RT), fine crystals
Potassium permanganate, puriss. p.a., ACS reagent, reag. Ph. Eur., >=99%
Potassium permanganate, suitable for determination of nitroxide, >=99.3%
Potassium permanganate, suitable for determination of toxic metals, >=99.5%
Potassium permanganate, p.a., ACS reagent, reag. ISO, reag. Ph. Eur., 99.0-100.5%
Potassium permanganate, puriss. p.a., ACS reagent, Hg <=0.000005%, >=99.0% (RT)
Potassium permanganate, puriss., meets analytical specification of Ph. Eur., BP, USP, 99-100.5%
