# Trip to a traditional gold mine. suggestions and questions..



## Anonymous (Apr 28, 2010)

Hi all~!

First off, I dont really know if it is appropriate to post this here. If it is in the wrong area, moderators please move it.
Thanks~!

Anyway, I just came back from a trip to a traditional gold mine in Asia.
I'd like to share my trip with the people here and also understand a little more about gold mining and refinery as I'd like to start a small business trading in gold or refining it.

*First off*
a quick trip up the mountains... to the camp... these camps are littered all over the place... with 1 mountain having as many as 20 - 30 camps...







*After which*
it's a quick trip down the damp musty mines.... there isn't much in terms of safety equipment...
entrance is guarded by their guys and you have to crawl in by the small entrance... they have no generator for lights or blowers to circulate the air... then again... the mines are still not that big as they've only been working on them for about 8 months with 4-5 people working at the same time... 

they use hand chisels to cut into the rocks and carry them out via small polyester gunny sacks...
















*Out of the mines...*
the guys show me how pure their rocks are by crushing 1 small piece of rock, about the size of half a packet of cigarettes.
then panning the gold to show me the gold dust that settles at the bottom of the pan...

they inform me that this is not how they actually get most of their gold as they only use this method to locate the "most" deposits of gold. (a little unclear about this.)














*How they process their gold*

they first place the rocks they identify as having the most gold (reddish and black streaks)
into a cyclindrical machine that breaks the rocks into little pieces... they add mercury into this and collect the end result. a small blob of soft greyish silver. (about 3 - 4 hours)

then, they add some powdery stuff,(im unclear what it is), and they torch the lump of amalgam until they get the piece of gold that is shown on the palm.


























Thats it folks!

Now comes the icky part... begging for assistance...

1.I have the below as samples... the silvery grey metal and the small lump of gold. the cigarette is there as a comparison for size.
the silvery grey metal is "white gold" as they term it...
the small piece of yellow gold is the gold that is processed from the mercury amalgam...
Could some please tell me what is the purity of gold for both pieces?
or theoratically, what is the purity of gold that is gotten from mercury amalgam?




2. What improvements can i suggest to the villagers to improve their yield, their methods, etc...
they are currently disposing of their mercury into the field and letting their children play with them...
they practise no form of safety...
it's really quite bad... 

i'd love to be able to help them by advising them of the dangerous properties of mercury. but in order to do so, i must come across as being someone who is able to teach them how to save costs/improve effectiveness...

hope the guys here can help.

Thanks and Regards,
C.Y


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## Anonymous (Apr 28, 2010)

bring this up.


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## Harold_V (Apr 28, 2010)

ceewye said:


> 1.I have the below as samples... the silvery grey metal and the small lump of gold. the cigarette is there as a comparison for size.
> the silvery grey metal is "white gold" as they term it...


Their "white gold", from your description, is the amalgam. Unless I misunderstood your comments, they are not retorting the amalgam, but, instead, burning off the mercury with a torch. Ecologically speaking, that is a huge mistake, and there is little need to mention the hazards to human health. Only a complete fool would evaporate mercury intentionally, without containing the vapors. A retort would be required.



> Could some please tell me what is the purity of gold for both pieces or theoratically, what is the purity of gold that is gotten from mercury amalgam??


No one can provide that information without an assay. The process in question serves as a recovery procedure, not a refining procedure. While the overall quality of the gold may be slighly improved, it would be unreasonable to expect the quality to be in keeping with industry standards, unless it was of very high quality in the ore. That is rarely the case. 



> 2. What improvements can i suggest to the villagers to improve their yield, their methods, etc...they are currently disposing of their mercury into the field and letting their children play with them...they practise no form of safety...it's really quite bad...


My opinion? There's not much you can do. Without technology at their disposal, they likely can't do much to improve their operation. What would help them tremendously is machinery---which is likely beyond their reach. 
One thing that they could do is build a retort, and insure that all amalgam was properly processed, recovering the mercury for further use. A simple retort could be built from pipe and pipe fittings, which would be far better than simply burning off mercury with a torch. The problem may be, however, that they do not have such things at their disposal. 

It would also be very useful for them to have information at their disposal, detailing the negative aspects of handling mercury. 



> i'd love to be able to help them by advising them of the dangerous properties of mercury. but in order to do so, i must come across as being someone who is able to teach them how to save costs/improve effectiveness...


You may have your hands full. Unless the people involved are somewhat educated, I think you'll find that their ignorance will be very limiting. Traditional ways are often impossible to change amongst the ignorant. I speak from experience, with memories of elderly people, all of whom immigrated to the US from Greece. Good, decent people, but fraught with misinformation and unwilling to be enlightened. It's the nature of people. 

In order for them to change, they must be enlightened, and they must have at their disposal, things that make the work load lighter. That may not be possible for them. You didn't say. 

Harold


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## aflacglobal (Apr 28, 2010)

Ceewye you tried to send me a p.m. 
My p.m. doesn't work for the aflac account.
You can p.m. me on other accounts i have.
Forum member name :arrow: Platinum- Palladium or [email protected]


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## qst42know (Apr 28, 2010)

A retort will allow them to live longer but may be a tough sell on this alone. You may not be able to get them to give up using mercury but I would suppose they trade some of what little gold they find to buy more mercury. This practice of selling them mercury may be a racket run by their gold buyer upping their margin so use some caution here. If you could convince them to reuse the mercury over and over properly then perhaps they will be able to keep more of what they risk their lives for.

A great deal of caution all the way around, the current gold buyer may not appreciate a foreigner dipping into their income and it looks to be a very remote jungle. This exploitation may well be generations old and have some powerful people at the top.


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## aussco999 (May 3, 2010)

Hey CY:

You have made a couple of post basically on the same subject, so I’ll just reply to both of them here. I enjoyed the photos of your visit to the mines. They bring back a lot memories of some of the primitive mine sites and conditions I’ve visited in the past. I’ve been 100s of feet down in mines big enough to drive trucks in, and 100s of feet down in small rat-hole mines which still amazes me of the condition some people will work in to feed their families. Most mining projects start out in primitive locations, under very primitive conditions, including primitive and outdated recovery methods.

Using mercury is one of those outdated methods, yet I still see it used a lot in Mexico where I’m now working. I have photos of places were they use an arrastra crusher (heavy stones dragged around a circular patio) to pulverize the ore material, then add mercury to recovery the gold. Their idea of modern equipment is using a gas-powered motor to run the arrastra instead of mules. In most places they’ll use a retort to recovery the mercury, but not always.

Regarding the purity of your gold in the amalgam, the only way to determine that is by laboratory analysis. Using a fire assay, including inquartation and bead parting on head ore will provide you with both a quantitative and qualitative (how much and purity) analysis of the gold. You could use wet chemistry to separate the different elements out of the amalgam and have an AA or ICP-MS tests performed to determine the contaminates and percentages. There are probably many other testing procedures some of the other forum members could enlighten you with, but the ones I’ve mentioned are standard and accepted in the mining industry.

Regarding the environmental problems with mercury, that’s a rich man/country’s concern. I’ve talked to many of small primitive miners that were more concerned about their next meal, than their longevity. Because I obviously eat well enough, my personal standpoint is a moral obligation to help, within reason, to wean them off of the mercury and on to safer recovery methods. With the proper set up, 20 micron gravity recovery is possible.

As Harold so elegantly pointed out, you will have to show them, not just tell them, a better recovery method to improve their lives. Fortunately, some good information is already available in your part of the world. There is a program right now in Mongolia, sponsored by the Swiss, called Sustainable Artisanal Mining (SAM) Project. You can visit their website at;

http://www.sam.mn/index.php?cont=76&type=1&lang=0

and download their info on some mercury replacement and recovery methods at;

http://www.sam.mn/en/samcomponent/technological-a-technical-issues/gold-hard-rock-mine.html

I can help you with some low to reasonable cost ideas for locally manufactured mining equipment (maybe another business opportunity for you), that should increase their production and recovery rates (translated as improved life style), if you have the ways and means of getting the local miners to act on the information. I’ll leave the refining, purifying and selling of the gold to the more knowledgeable forum members. Out of curiosity and in case I know of someone in the business closer to you, in which country are these mines located?

Good luck with your project, :mrgreen: 

John


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## One Blanket (May 11, 2010)

I can add two things that might help you and the miners with the mercury handling issue.
I don't remember where I saw it on the internet but the cheapest way to retort / recover the mercury from the spounge uses a large shallow pot filled with water / on a heat source, something like a brick inside to hold the spounge above the water, then a lid to trap the vaporized mercury which as it condenses & runs down to the lip of the lid is collected by the water pool.
I expect cooking pots & lids used for that should be dedicated to gold and not used again for cooking/ cast iron or stainless or does it matter? I wonder about the heat needed to vaporize the mercury will heat the water / which is supposed to trap the condensed mercury. 
Method number two is too expensive for practical/poor miners unless they pool their money. The Phillipines government has MIRDC ( Mining & Industrial Research Development Counsel (Corp?). They developed a retort that looks like the thing to have. It is a stainless screw-on about as large as a small coffee cup where the heat from a torch drives vapor thru a stainless tube into a mason jar condenser. It took me a year to get a price of around $400 US if I did the money conversion correctly.


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## Anonymous (May 11, 2010)

Wow... They are using a very ancient and time tested practice. Also quite a terrible one for obvious reasons. The "white gold" would need to be assayed for exact percentages, but there are a few tricks that would allow you to get a pretty reasonable estimate. I can also give you some tips on gold mining in a low tech environment. 

For starters, you should measure the density of the gold extract. Compare it to the density of a gold standard. If they match up well then you can use the mass of the bead as your "yield." If you divide the weight of your sample by the amount of "white gold used" you will have a pretty good estimate. Impurities would make this method inappropriate for analytic chemistry or market labeling, but as an estimate this approach is more than sufficient. Be warned that slight variations will likely occur just because these folk are not processing this gold under standard conditions. 

As to suggestions for improving their work. Assuming that they had access to copper, they should be able to prepare nitric acid very easily. Nitric acid would be a great improvement over mercury. Even with their low tech, there are many ways that one can go from soil to concentrated nitric acid. If you want to know more, feel free to contact me at [email protected] (I prefer not to post in detail about the manufacture of Nitric acid with low tech means as we all know of the other uses for Nitric acid.) I will of course share that information with you in confidence or refer you to reliable places.


As was already said, they should use a retort and recycle their mercury. Its an absolute waste/public health hazard to dump mercury like that. If recycling is not possible, perhaps somebody might be willing to buy the retorted mercury. It would not surprise me to learn that they are also preparing their mercury through an ancient technique. Mercury used to be extracted by heating certain ores in clay pots. If they are preparing their own mercury then it might actually be a product they can sell. 

I will follow up with more suggestions as my time permits.


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