# micron gold recovery



## Anonymous (Apr 27, 2010)

Good Morning to all,
I found your site last night, thank you google. I am excited to have found a place for assistance and maybe I can help someone else too.

I/we have a problem that we hope you can help with. I need to start at the beginning and hopefully I won't forget anything. Here Goes:

Last winter my partner and I were enlightened to the possibility of recovering micron gold from water by merely pumping it out of the source, through cloth filters and discharging the water back to the source. We were introduced to a fellow who is confident that it can be quite profitable in some locations. We, as under employed contractors decided to try it with this fellow/refiner as a partner.

We chose a rather remote location to try it out and obtained a gallon or so of river water for our refiner to test. We were pretty sure our location is good as there is a working placer mine upstream about a mile and the headwaters are known gold producing areas. Telluride areas. Our refiner said he got a good test result and we set out to procure the rental equipment needed. Pump, filter canisters, ect..

We set up with a 3 inch pump, 4 inch hose into a quad plex of filer canisters, into another quad plex of canisters and then discharged back to the river. In the first quad set of canisters we used 25 micron filters and in the second quad we used 1 micron filters. After a trial period of sucking sand off the bottom we realized we needed to keep the suction off the bottom and then fell into a routine of changing filters every 4 hours. It seems to work well. We ended up with about 180lbs of material-wet after cleaning out our bags.

My partner left the site after the first day with about 10 lbs of 1 micron material on the 12th and delivered it to our refiner to test process. We have been waiting for results all this time, our refine guy leach and cooked it and says he's sure of gold but unable to totally refine it to purity. We picked up half the precious metals last night in hopes of finding someone who can solve the rest of the puzzle to get a marketable product.
The initial 10 lbs yielded 168 grams of product. We have 2 dore bars of around 2 oz each that we need help with.

Some details which may help: We know there is a high content of iron in micron ore, dore bars are NOT magnetic.
Our river flows through some desert areas known for uranium our refine guy found some too.
He also is concerned about radium/Rhodium?.

We took 2 samples of 1 micron and 1 of 25 micron to Hazen Research in Golden last week and they did a fire assay for us.
The results were not promising <002 oz per ton for gold.
Is it possible the fire assay could have missed the Micron gold?

If you can assist us in any way thank you. We are looking for someone in CO southern WY or east Utah who can help us with refining to figure out what is our problem is with obtaining a better product.

Thank You for your help


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## shyknee (Apr 27, 2010)

im not an expert 

but i think you've been had or this is someone's joke or hoax

and you fell hook line and sinker I hate it when this happens to good people


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## shyknee (Apr 29, 2010)

ccs01

i was wondering what others think about this  :?: :?: :?: :?:


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## manorman (Apr 29, 2010)

Have a assay done on your dore bars and see what you have, 
Mike


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## Anonymous (Apr 29, 2010)

Mike,
My bars are at a lab now. Should know by tomorrow.

Thanks, Mike


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## aussco999 (May 3, 2010)

Hey ccs01:

I don’t want to rain on your parade, but this type of get-rich-easy scheme and it’s many variations have been around a long time. It’s based on quasi facts, but more often than not, includes a lot of “if, or, and but”, to explain why it isn’t working. It sounds like a great idea to set up a screen/filter system to get values from river water, but there are just to many variables against you.

For example, the 25/1 micron filtration system you are using will catch “ALL” the suspend particles in the water down to that mesh size, both organic and inorganic. I’ve trout fished in some of Colorado’s crystal clear streams, but your rivers are just as dirty as every place else I’ve visited. In other words, you are extracting everything down to one micron from the water. Based upon the TSS (total suspended solids) in the water, the fire assay number may be right on. Fire assays are very reliable, in the hands of a good technician, but even they can sometimes screw things up. In this case, you might be better off with an AA or ICP analysis. Also, a 50 element Mass-Spec would be helpful to determine the other contaminations in your dore bar.

The hydraulic workings of any river can be very confusing to read considering the many changes from laminar to turbulent flow and back. Most know the heavy visible gold (SpG. 15/19) will sink and where it’s normally found in a river. In your case, the 25/1 micron gold (the unaided eye can see down to about 40 micron) can’t overcome the surrounding surface tension of the water and is often carried in the middle third of the river’s water level. Not until the water is totally quiescent will this micron gold settle out, sometimes taking days to do so. There are several recorded cases of gold of this particle size being transported 100s of mile downstream from it’s source.

Pumping off the river bottom will only clog your filters with junk, including the larger black sand (SpG. 5/6) material, and pumping off the top will fill your filter with the light floating crap. Your best chance of recovering any micron gold would be pumping from the middle level of the river. Because neither mesh or carbon filters are gold specific, our “enlightened” recovery system offered by the “confident” fellow will collect a lot of gangue material from the river. And, regardless how many placer operations are upstream, if the river is large enough, there might be a HUGE dilution factor effecting the recoverable gold. You might be looking at pumping millions of gallons before seeing any real returns.

I don’t mean to dissuade you from any gold project, as much as wanting to forewarn you to keep a keen eye on your wallet. I’ve never seen nor heard of anyone of these operations working in the manner that you have described. And, of all of the people who say they know a friend, of a friend, of a friend that is now living in Fat City by filtering gold from water, they still can’t show you the proverbial pot or the window to throw it out of.

Beware, proceed with caution and good luck, :mrgreen: 

John


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## Harold_V (May 3, 2010)

Good post, John. 

Harold


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## goldsilverpro (May 4, 2010)

> Good post, John.


I agree with Harold, wholeheartedly,

Good to have you aboard, John.


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## jsargent (May 5, 2010)

As John described so accurately, there is a size range of gold particles in surface waters that is very difficult to recover economically, despite what some have claimed. If the particles are large enough (Im guessing about 40 microns) they can be recovered with a vibrating table or enhanced gravity concentrator, perhaps even a spiral concentrator if you're careful. OR, if the particles are small enough to be colloidal or smaller as actually in solution, gold can be recovered with charcoal or selective resins. Clogging and bio-fouling are always a problem. The in-between sized particles can of course be collected, as you've discovered, using straight filtration but you cannot help but collect all the other suspended particles, so although, in theory, the water may have appreciable value per gallon, the filtered sludge you end up with may have minimal value per ton especially when you consider you're now dealing with physical sediment (mud) instead of easy to pump water. 

The economic recovery of suspended gold from surface waters is a siren's song and a path littered with the corpses of the bankrupt.


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## kosmow (Jun 18, 2022)

_Well water in areas that have high concentrations of sulfur would be a better place to look for micron gold. Here in the Appalachian mountains at the Southern end I find an abundance of microscopic gold embedded in the rock. The well here is practically useless due to the amount of sulfur in the water supply and being a curious individual I have tried to find out what can be done with it. I have a double filter on the intake for my geothermal unit to keep it from contaminating the transfer coil inside the unit. One day I pulled out the filters and dried them out and inspected the powder with a microscope and low and behold it was full of microscopic perfectly spheres of what appears to be gold. How to capture the fines and turn into bars is what I'm working on now. Any advice is greatly appreciated._


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## orvi (Jun 18, 2022)

We again have miracles upon the scene  perfect spheres... Never seen one in nature, when speaking about anything, not the gold alone. I have seen bunch of native gold in my life, but gold spheres on the filter.. I would like to see some photos


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## stoneware (Jun 18, 2022)

How to water assay.


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## orvi (Jun 18, 2022)

stoneware said:


> How to water assay.


Yeah, I know that it is a real thing to have nanogram concentrations of heavy and precious metals in groundwaters... But golden spheres detectable under visible light microscope/magnifying glass - that seems a bit sci-fi for me  

I do believe that hydrothermal deposits form also in today conditions as well. But spheres of gold, never seen such "crystal" formation with gold in my life.


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