# Inexpensive chemicals and microbes that absorb precious metals?



## justinhcase (Dec 13, 2021)

Have not seen these people before.
What do you think?
A more efficient process or an investor trap?


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## Martijn (Dec 13, 2021)

Good to see where your (electronic) scrap goes if processing here is not profitable, and 'better sell it as it is' and buy gold... as i've also recommend at times. 
Okay, it's money in the hand and no waste in your workplace... but making it someone elses problem after getting shipped out across the globe. 
With chemical waste we seem to understand that we should not make our toxic waste someone elses problem, but we all are doing that with our other waste. Roll it downhill, they will clean the mess up because of the hopeless situation they're in, with corrupt leaders, lack of human rights and social security. 
Sure, if we don't dump our waste over there, someone else will, or ours will even end up there via some corrupt (and probably ngo certified) back route.
In time the rich west will be blamed for all that trash and pollution over there, and partially, that's true. 
I think it's a good initiative that we need to further develop. Like fractional plasma destillation recovery also is an option, it will cost money one way or the other. Subsidized or higher product prices to pay for it all. And who will pay ten times the price for their products and raw materials if some big county on the other side of the globe still produces dirt cheap and has monopoly on mines and cheap minerals. 
Great way to silence your political critics, and have cheap production. 
But i also order stuff there. Should we all stop doing that, life would get a lot more expensive. 

But gold eating bacteria...WOW! And in that rate... pretty awesome find. There still are things to be discovered. Luckily. 

Time consumes everything, exept gold and platinum, as i thought. 
The rusty old stuff laying around in the video is conumed by time, oxygen, water, temperature and air imo, as are surface rocks and minerals. 
Imagine buying a claim and only finding traces of bacteria left after the gold is eaten and washed away. 

Very interesting video! Food for thought. 

Martijn.


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## butcher (Dec 13, 2021)

I would not go so far as to say that time consumes everything but it does change a lot of things.

Gold or other metals do not disappear into oblivion, even if bacteria or hot acids at high pressure/(temperatures) in the earth's geological systems dissolve or eat it up the gold is normally deposited somewhere else, maybe in another form. 

Even our bodies are made up of minerals or metals in various forms we consume, like iron, zinc, calcium, and even gold. so yes even humans contain gold like some kind of gold-eating bacterias taking gold to oblivion with us, well actually even that gold stays here, it does not just disapear, as we turn to dust and blow into that blissful oblivion.

Funny how some think, they will save our planet by shipping their trash to someone else's back yard and buying more trash they do not really need, having someone else do the dirty work and run the dirty factory smokestacks with slave labor to get their goods cheap, well we are all going to have to pay the piper sometime.

Look at who now holds most of the world's gold, the gold is not disappearing, but like the trash, and factories it is changing forms or hands. yes, we will all have to pay one day.

Many gold mines are rich in gold because of the earth's actions and its bacteria, you just need to test drill and assay before investing in that mine, to see if the bacteria left it in the rock there or took it somewhere else to deposit it in richer grounds.


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## justinhcase (Dec 13, 2021)

butcher said:


> I would not go so far as to say that time consumes everything but it does change a lot of things.
> 
> Gold or other metals do not disappear into oblivion, even if bacteria or hot acids at high pressure/(temperatures) in the earth's geological systems dissolve or eat it up the gold is normally deposited somewhere else, maybe in another form.
> 
> ...


I am sat on the fence.
I understand the action of some extremophiles.
But in all honesty, I can not see how they would be more practical than static separation and smelting.
All available gold on the surface of the earth was deposited her by meteorite some two hundred and sixty-five million years ago.
It was evenly dispersed and since then has been concentrated on an abundance of natural catchments.
Unfortunately, all the most concentrated deposits have been found and mined, leaving a spectrum of less profitable deposits.
As gold is so intrinsic in all technologies, it is only a matter of time before deposits that were uneconomical become attractive.
Until the evolution of asteroid mining, then most all elements will become equally abundant.
In the meantime, as history has demonstrated, for every honest purveyor of technical advice there will be ten charlatans confusing the subject and making money out of other people's ignorance.
How do we decide if this process has merit that would justify further exertion in replication, or if they are just a clever con artist duping investors out of their hard-earned money using a fancy story involving microbes?
I saw a few conventional refining processes.
And a tun a day?
How could you keep the lights on?


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## Jado (Dec 13, 2021)

Poor little microbes! 

I fail to see any improvement over mainstream methods. At least they’re trying.


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## Yggdrasil (Dec 13, 2021)

We have a member that discovered a strain of bacterias he uses to concentrate PMs in ore, so try to keep an open mind.

The world/nature are often much weirder than we believe.

I don't know if he have achieved to process economically though.
But anyway interesting work.

Regards Per-Ove


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## fishaholic5 (Dec 17, 2021)

It's more than viable as a recovery method to produce concentrates from ores, natural and man made solutions and in this case ewaste.
There are historical references to ancient techniques that I explored many years ago that harness natural processes in precious metal recovery. These were still being used by the Chinese on the Australian Goldfields in the late 1800's. I doubt anyone can really claim to be the first to use bacteria or microorganisms.... We are merely learning how to use them again for our current purposes.

It's good to see the many years of research in the field resulting in viable alternative recovery methods, especially in the ewaste industry, I hope they do well with it.

Cheers Wal


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