Lignite as a low-grade coal resource utilization rate is not high, but lignite has humic acid composition. From the view of low-rank coal resources reuse, humic acid extracted from lignite can be used as raw material of chemical fertilizer and extracted residue can be used as carbon source to synthesize MnS@C composite with MnS nanoparticles. When applied to the anode material of lithium-ion batteries (LiBs), The specific surface area and pore volume of MnS@C composite are 117.19m2/g and 0.044mL/g, respectively and it shows high specific capacity of 830 mAh/g after 200 cycles at 0.1 A/g, excellent rate capability with capacity values of 644, 522, 427, 399, 373 and 348 mAh/g at current desities of 0.2, 0.4 0.8 1.0 1.2 and 1.6 A/g, respectively, remarkable cycle performance of maintaining about 99% after 200 cycles at 0.1 A/g. The exceptional electrochemical performance of MnS@C is due to the existence of carbon matrix, which can not only buffer the volume expansion of MnS nanoparticles in the process of lithiation/delithiation, but also show the great potential for high-performance LiBs, and make a great contribution to the high-value utilization of lignite.