Extracting Gold from Seawater

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Anonymous

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Folks, I realize that this topic has probably been discussed before but I could not find good threads when searching for it here. Also, I realize that many people will instinctively say that it is "uneconomical" to extract gold from seawater, but I believe my situation may make it economical, so please hear me out.

I am an Electrical Engineer and I have developed a way to pump seawater using renewable energy - specifically using the waves themselves to power my pump. The primary purpose of the pumped seawater is to power the hydroturbines on shore to generate electricity. I already have engineering designs made up for a 3-5MW power plant using this method.

This power plant will pump a total of about 3-5 cubic meters/second of seawater. After powering the hydroturbines, I have to discharge this amount of sea water back to the sea - UNLESS, I can make use of it for further economic gain.

The best idea I am considering is to extract gold and other precious metals from this existing seawater flow.

Many people said that gold extraction is uneconomical because of the amount of sea water one has to pump to shore. The energy involved in pumping so much seawater would make it uneconomical. But what if, the pumping cost is zero, I am already pumping for my hydroturbine using renewable energy, I can deliver this amount of seawater flow for free. All of a sudden, the energy equation becomes favorable, probably leading to a favorable economic situation.

Knowing this fact, how would one go about in building a contraption to extract gold from this amount of seawater flow (5m3/s)?

I was thinking of using some electrolysis method using carbon anodes to extract the gold. Can anybody suggest a better method? Even if you don't have all the details, it would help me further in my research.

I appreciate any and all inputs. I may be an electrical engineer, but I am ignorant of any methods (electrolysis or otherwise) for extracting gold from seawater.

If an economical method can be adapted to my power plants, this would be huge economically and I would be willing to partner with companies and individuals in bringing this to full market penetration. I plan to build about 300 power plant just here in the Philippines alone, so this could be huge.

Jojo
 
This has been discussed, several times and summarily shot down each time. We even had a couple of members that had schematics for the process. No matter what the design, no matter the conveyance, the cost of producing gold from sea water will always outweigh the profit. The largest component of sea water is sodium chloride next to water. It's the sodium chloride that holds the gold suspended, well at least the chlorine part. We have had some that could surely be called kook's and/or scoundrels that tried to sell plans for extracting gold from seawater.

Please research and try to figure it out. I doubt anyone here can help you as we use tried and true methods to obtain and refine gold. Just one word of warning, the first time you mention needing a partner or financial aid to get this working with a huge payout, you will be removed from the forum. On this forum, the moderators do a good job of protecting readers from their own gullibility.
 
Geo said:
This has been discussed, several times and summarily shot down each time. We even had a couple of members that had schematics for the process. No matter what the design, no matter the conveyance, the cost of producing gold from sea water will always outweigh the profit. The largest component of sea water is sodium chloride next to water. It's the sodium chloride that holds the gold suspended, well at least the chlorine part. We have had some that could surely be called kook's and/or scoundrels that tried to sell plans for extracting gold from seawater.

Please research and try to figure it out. I doubt anyone here can help you as we use tried and true methods to obtain and refine gold. Just one word of warning, the first time you mention needing a partner or financial aid to get this working with a huge payout, you will be removed from the forum. On this forum, the moderators do a good job of protecting readers from their own gullibility.


Thanks for the HELPFUL comments.

BTW, I am not asking for money, I have money. I am asking for a partner with the know how to do this. I will provide the seed capital to build it. I am not asking for MONEY.

Why is it that people always read wicked ulterior motives to honest questions. If you represent the kind of people in this forum and your attitude is typical of member's attitudes here, then by all means, ask the moderator to ban me.

Jojo
 
Jojo Iznart said:
Thanks for the HELPFUL comments.

BTW, I am not asking for money, I have money. I am asking for a partner with the know how to do this. I will provide the seed capital to build it. I am not asking for MONEY.

Why is it that people always read wicked ulterior motives to honest questions. If you represent the kind of people in this forum and your attitude is typical of member's attitudes here, then by all means, ask the moderator to ban me.

Jojo

I apologize for making it seem I was being rude, that was not my intention. If I had the address I would have you contact Dr. Poe as he had some ideas about the same thing. Personally, I don't know how to get into contact with him. Gold from river water and well water and ocean water is not something that anyone (left) on the forum has any experience in. I doubt you will find someone here that can help you out.

As far as the forum, you will never find a more helpful and generous group of people anywhere on the planet. I hope that you can stay around and learn more about the way gold in solution acts and why it is so difficult to extract.

By the way, a very wise man here on the forum has a great saying "money never goes looking for people, it's always the other way around". Please try and keep in mind that gold tends to bring out the worst in people.
 
No disrespect intended. If you have the money to build power plants. You have the money to hire a company to develop this idea for you. There are all kinds of companies willing to spend your money for you on a fruitless idea such as this.

Oh I see you want someone to design and build with their money. If the idea was feasible it would already be happening.

Forget the gold recovery thing and look at desalination of ocean water for drinking and irrigation.

Setup up a desalination plant on the West Coast of the USA and you could be a Billionaire many times over.
 
solar_plasma said:
You want to produce electricity, you could sell high and want to waste it for some cents of gold instead?

I am trying to determine if it is feasible. If it is not, I will not do it.

But so far, no one actually has any useful comment about the process and the technologies yet are so assuredly convinced that it is not feasible or economic. How did we all end up being so close-minded?

Has anyone here actually looked at the economics and not simply relying on old hearsay and anecdotal urban myths about some people's comments from decades ago? Has anyone studied the energy balance and the economics in detail here? That is the kind of person that would be useful in this discussion, not the instinctive knee-jerk reactions I have received so far.


Jojo
 
Jojo,

It may seem like people are giving you knee-jerk reactions, but it's because they have read the previous posts on the subject. Try a search for the words gold from seawater to get you started.

It has been tried before, and not just on a small scale. Up till now, it has been unsuccessful. That's not to say someone may not discover a way in the future, but so far, no one has cracked the riddle.

Dave
 
Jojo Iznart said:
But so far, no one actually has any useful comment about the process and the technologies yet are so assuredly convinced that it is not feasible or economic. How did we all end up being so close-minded?

Has anyone here actually looked at the economics and not simply relying on old hearsay and anecdotal urban myths about some people's comments from decades ago? Has anyone studied the energy balance and the economics in detail here? That is the kind of person that would be useful in this discussion, not the instinctive knee-jerk reactions I have received so far.


Jojo
Look at what Patnor said above...
patnor1011 said:
0.004 ppb
Good luck.
That's 0.004 / 1000000000 or 4 mg gold per 1000 m3, 1g per 250.000 m3.
Let's say for arguments sake that there were an easy electrolytic method that didn't required any additives to the solution. For an electrolytic method to work you need to pass all the solution in close proximity of the electrodes, gold ions don't jump across water to attach to an electrode. The ions need time to migrate to the electrode. So how big would this facility have to be? Without calculating, just looking at the numbers... 250.000 m3 for the gold value of $36 minus any running costs (personnel, electricity, service...) and the loss of power production in your power plant. I'm sure you know the importance of not hindering the flow of water in a hydro power plant. How much gold would you need to justify a drop in productivity and how much water would that represent?

But a chemical solution then, you say. Well, that's no go either. How much chemicals do you need to treat the water to create the environment to precipitate gold? And even if you would do it the gold would come down so fine it would take forever to settle, probably literary since it would probably make a colloidal solution.

It didn't take much to do a reality check, just run the numbers and then you will find out that gold from seawater is a pipe dream. Any gold from seawater in the near future will come as a byproduct from other processes. Lithium for example exists in concentrations four million times higher than gold and represents a value of 8000 times the value of gold but still there is no "mining" of the seawater for lithium. (Three salt lakes are mined for lithium, I wonder what concentration of gold they have there... http://chemwiki.ucdavis.edu/Inorganic_Chemistry/Descriptive_Chemistry/s-Block_Elements/Group__1%3A_The_Alkali_Metals/Chemistry_of_Lithium#Extraction_from_Saltwater ).

Sea water is also a huge mess with a lot biological stuff and almost any atoms you can imagine.
http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2005-11/rhf/index.php#4

Göran
 
Jojo Iznart said:
Why is it that people always read wicked ulterior motives to honest questions.
It's called a reality check. History has revealed the probability of success in a venture such as you have suggested. A healthy dose of skepticism is required in order for wise decisions to be made.

If you represent the kind of people in this forum and your attitude is typical of member's attitudes here, then by all means, ask the moderator to ban me.

Jojo

Try to keep a good attitude, as, should you not, that, alone, will be reason enough to ban you from this board.

We are men of science, and tend to have an open mind to subjects which have proven to be scientific in nature. We are not prone to pursuing pie in the sky dreams. That's not to suggest that what you have proposed qualifies, but you have been presented with enough information to consider to determine if your desired plan is realistic, or not. To this point in time, it is not realistic. Perhaps you will be the one to change that. None of us can say.

One of those who responded is a physicist, and well respected for his contributions to this board. That you don't like his comments is no reason to kill the messenger.

To this point in time, no one has cracked the code to extraction of gold from sea water. If for no other reason, it becomes cost prohibitive, exceeding the value of the gold recovered.

Piping sea water to land for extraction isn't required. If there was a method of extraction, floating factories would be employed, just as they are employed for the recovery of desirable elements such as bromine, yet it is not being done. Consider that in your investigation.

Harold
 
g_axelsson said:
Jojo Iznart said:
But so far, no one actually has any useful comment about the process and the technologies yet are so assuredly convinced that it is not feasible or economic. How did we all end up being so close-minded?

Has anyone here actually looked at the economics and not simply relying on old hearsay and anecdotal urban myths about some people's comments from decades ago? Has anyone studied the energy balance and the economics in detail here? That is the kind of person that would be useful in this discussion, not the instinctive knee-jerk reactions I have received so far.


Jojo
Look at what Patnor said above...
patnor1011 said:
0.004 ppb
Good luck.
That's 0.004 / 1000000000 or 4 mg gold per 1000 m3, 1g per 250.000 m3.
Let's say for arguments sake that there were an easy electrolytic method that didn't required any additives to the solution. For an electrolytic method to work you need to pass all the solution in close proximity of the electrodes, gold ions don't jump across water to attach to an electrode. The ions need time to migrate to the electrode. So how big would this facility have to be? Without calculating, just looking at the numbers... 250.000 m3 for the gold value of $36 minus any running costs (personnel, electricity, service...) and the loss of power production in your power plant. I'm sure you know the importance of not hindering the flow of water in a hydro power plant. How much gold would you need to justify a drop in productivity and how much water would that represent?

But a chemical solution then, you say. Well, that's no go either. How much chemicals do you need to treat the water to create the environment to precipitate gold? And even if you would do it the gold would come down so fine it would take forever to settle, probably literary since it would probably make a colloidal solution.

It didn't take much to do a reality check, just run the numbers and then you will find out that gold from seawater is a pipe dream. Any gold from seawater in the near future will come as a byproduct from other processes. Lithium for example exists in concentrations four million times higher than gold and represents a value of 8000 times the value of gold but still there is no "mining" of the seawater for lithium. (Three salt lakes are mined for lithium, I wonder what concentration of gold they have there... http://chemwiki.ucdavis.edu/Inorganic_Chemistry/Descriptive_Chemistry/s-Block_Elements/Group__1%3A_The_Alkali_Metals/Chemistry_of_Lithium#Extraction_from_Saltwater ).

Sea water is also a huge mess with a lot biological stuff and almost any atoms you can imagine.
http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2005-11/rhf/index.php#4

Göran

A few points:

1. I will be running 5m3/s of seawater... so that means running flow total of 432000 m3/day. Assuming for now that I have a method of extracting 100% of the gold in it, this amount of water would contain 43.2 grams of gold worth $1628 in today's prices. Not chump change by any means.

2. Since water flow is free cost, the only other big energy item would be the electrolysis energy to be inputted. Does anyone know how much energy an electrolyzer will consume? I guess this is the most critical parameter that I don't know before I can decide if the method is feasible or not.

3. The infrastructure seems not to prohibitive or expensive according to my initial analysis. I would require a few pipe channels to divert the flow. In the channels would be the electrodes. As seawater flows in this pipe channel, the electrodes should capture the gold ions. It seems to me that the channels can be pvc piping with carbon electrodes installed regularly along its length. This would allow ample chance to capture the gold ions as it flows along the pvc piping channels.

4. Human labor in the Philippines cost approx $4-$5/day. It would not be expensive to hire a person to periodically and routinely collect the gold accumulations on the electrodes. One person full time should be sufficient for this task. No other maintenance costs is expensive.

5. The remaining high cost item would be the electrolysis energy needed. Do you have any idea how much this will cost?


Jojo
 
g_axelsson said:
That's 0.004 / 1000000000 or 4 mg gold per 1000 m3, 1g per 250.000 m3.
Göran

I believe there is an error in your figure above.

I believe there is 4mg of gold/ton of water or 4mg/m3 NOT 4mg/1000m3.


Jojo
 
Harold_V said:
Jojo Iznart said:
Why is it that people always read wicked ulterior motives to honest questions.
It's called a reality check. History has revealed the probability of success in a venture such as you have suggested. A healthy dose of skepticism is required in order for wise decisions to be made.

If you represent the kind of people in this forum and your attitude is typical of member's attitudes here, then by all means, ask the moderator to ban me.

Jojo

Try to keep a good attitude, as, should you not, that, alone, will be reason enough to ban you from this board.

We are men of science, and tend to have an open mind to subjects which have proven to be scientific in nature. We are not prone to pursuing pie in the sky dreams. That's not to suggest that what you have proposed qualifies, but you have been presented with enough information to consider to determine if your desired plan is realistic, or not. To this point in time, it is not realistic. Perhaps you will be the one to change that. None of us can say.

One of those who responded is a physicist, and well respected for his contributions to this board. That you don't like his comments is no reason to kill the messenger.

To this point in time, no one has cracked the code to extraction of gold from sea water. If for no other reason, it becomes cost prohibitive, exceeding the value of the gold recovered.

Piping sea water to land for extraction isn't required. If there was a method of extraction, floating factories would be employed, just as they are employed for the recovery of desirable elements such as bromine, yet it is not being done. Consider that in your investigation.

Harold


Harold,

If my attitude offends you so much, then by all means ban me. That is not a wish on my part but simply to point out how ridiculous the responses to my question has been. I have spent a considerable amount of time googling the internet for economic information regarding this, but have not found anything useful. That included searches on this forum.

Thus far, in over a dozen responses, only Goran has given an answer that resembles some semblance of usefulness. It seems that people's reactions has had a tone of rudeness in it.

All I was hoping for was for people to tell me why it is not economical; hopefully backed by math. Not the knee-jerk reactions that I have received so far.


Jojo
 
Jojo Iznart said:
Thus far, in over a dozen responses, only Goran has given an answer that resembles some semblance of usefulness. It seems that people's reactions has had a tone of rudeness in it.
I suggested some search terms I tested before posting. How was I rude?

Dave
 
FrugalRefiner said:
Jojo Iznart said:
Thus far, in over a dozen responses, only Goran has given an answer that resembles some semblance of usefulness. It seems that people's reactions has had a tone of rudeness in it.
I suggested some search terms I tested before posting. How was I rude?

Dave

I searched this forum before I posted, and searched it again using your suggested keywords. They all failed to return useful information. If you have a specific thread in mind that you feel I missed and you consider informative, please link it - I'd appreciate it.

Like I said, all I've seen are people expressing their opinion that it is "not economical". I have not seen any good calculations.


Jojo
 
Hold up and take a step back here and a deep breath guys.

The whole tone of this thread was started with an unfortunately termed post by Geo - for which he has apologised like the stand up guy that he is. Jojo take your foot off the gas and don't assume everyone is out to have a go at you. We're not.

Some of the lads here have already made some good observations and Frugal's advice to use the search facility was excellent. The search facility here is sometimes a little clunky so play around with terms you use but rest assured, there's a lot to learn here. Don't get yourself banned over a misunderstanding, there's far more to offer.
 
Is this useful?

First of all, where are you getting your numbers? When Nazi Germany was looking for money, they investigated gold in seawater. Fritz Haber, a top Nazi chemist that won the Nobel prize in Chemistry in 1918, went around the world collecting seawater samples. All in all, he analyzed 5000 samples and determined the the gold concentration to be an average of .008 mg/ton, about 125 times less than the .001g/ton they expected. At .008mg/ton (.0088mg/m3), your 432,000 gallons would only contain about 3.8g of gold. On the internet, there are lots of different numbers concerning the gold concentration in seawater. Although it was a long time ago and the equipment wasn't as good, I would consider the Haber number more valid than the others.

________________________________________________________________

If you have a gold plating solution that contains 1 tr.oz. of gold per gallon, the plating efficiency will be close to 100%. Assuming the gold has a valence of +3, 100% would be 2.449 grams of gold depositing on the cathode per amp, per hour.

As the gold concentration approaches zero, the efficiency also approaches zero. To be reduced on the cathode, the gold ion must be in intimate contact with the cathode. As the population of gold ions decreases, there are not enough gold ions in contact with the cathode, at any given time, to consume all of the amperage that's being applied. The excess amperage has to do something. It might split water or react with other chemicals in the seawater. When the gold is down to, say, 0.01g/l, the efficiency might be down to, say, 2%, and that might be conservative. In other words, only 2% of the amperage is depositing gold and 98% is doing something else. It would take 50 times more amperage to deposit a gram of gold from a 2% efficient solution than it would from a 100% efficient solution.

At a seawater concentration of .0088mg/m3, that would be .0000000088g/l. At that concentration, the efficiency would be almost non-existent. I would not be surprised if it was as low as one millionth of 1%. If so, it would take 100,000,000 amps for 1 hour to get the same 2.449g.

I've been plating gold, in one form or another, since 1966. When recovering gold by electrolysis, I usually was able to analyze the final effluent by AA. I have never seen a solution that was totally barren of gold after extended electrolysis. There was always at least .001g/l of gold remaining. If it wouldn't plate out at that level, it surely wouldn't plate out of a solution 113,000 times weaker.
 
I've thought on this and the only thing that I believe would make it even remotely economically possible is to set up a business selling clean fresh drinking water from a desalination plant using a high volume RO system.

Let the water business pay your bills.

Take the waste salt from the RO and separate out the NaCL and sell that. Then you have the left over salts of which one will be gold, (among many, many others).

If you make enough money on making clean drinking water for someplace that needs it, like people who live in a desert, or south west America, then you "may" have a chance at getting some gold.

But it's a 99.99% certainty that any attempt to focus only on gold from sea water is an economic failure from the get go. It will have to be as a by-product of some other money making venture. Companies make a good profit on just producing sea salt and they don't even try to isolate out any of the other salts. They just let the sun evaporate the water off and scoop up the salt and sell it as 99% pure salt.

I've often wondered if there was a way of making the RO membrane with exact enough size holes to let different size ions of the various metal salts be sorted as they are filtered from water. Then you could have a tap for clean water, a tap for table salt, a tap for iron salt, a tap for gold, etc.

Ok, enough silly dreaming, back to planet earth.
 
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