black sand concentrate extraction

[Irons]

Can anyone think of a mistake I may have done?

Did you get an assay? It would tell you what you have in your material. Is there a chance there is any arsenic in it? I would want to know that before I started throwing any of it in a fire. One of our members had an experience with arsenic. Perhaps Irons will let you know what that was like.

Dave

That's right, FR. $100K worth of medical bills and I still have not broken even yet, but I'm working on it. :mrgreen: You might get lucky and never have a problem. It took 30 years before I got nailed by an Arsenic mineral that had never been reported in this State (Maine)before. It came out of a crack in a ledge where I had already recovered a quantity of Gold fines, so I didn't pay much attention to it, since it had a Gold-like color to it. My bad.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arsenic_trisulfide

""Roasting" As2S3 in air gives volatile, toxic derivatives, this conversion being one of the hazards associated with the refining of heavy metal ores:

2 As2S3 + 9 O2 → As4O6 + 6 SO2"

 

[hussin]

Hussin, Dam sediments are usually fine grained sand to silt size particles. The richest gold concentrations should be where the flow of the river or creek first encounters the dam pond, when the current stops the gold should fall out quickly and seperate itself from the rest of the silt, which takes some time to settle out (muddy water takes all day to clear). You should see if it can be panned out gently in a gold pan, if so, then you should be able to sluice the material through a "beach box" which is a wide sluice with a thin veneer of water designed to extract gold from beach sand, tropical soils also typically carry very fine grained gold and they use a similar setup with two layers of burlap over a carpet, the gold falls through the burlap and sticks to the carpet. If the gold is too fine grained to catch using traditional equipment there are other ways that will work. Before you go and dump cyanide all over everything, you should check out "Mineral jigs" on the internet, you could buy a used one and retrofit it for your unique sedimentary environment (smaller holes and shot). More modern machines such as Knelson concentrators (the company has a catalog on the internet) can catch very fine grained gold and are made for applications like you describe, another comapany to check out is Icon a Canadian company that also specializes in fine grained gold recovery (Iconcentrator.com). Please by all means check out these techniques for recovering fine grained gold before using cyanide, low concentration cyanide heap leaching is for hard rock clasts on the order of 1 to 1/2 inch diameter, to wash your material would require large vats using a higher concentration of cyanide and several washes, you would have waste water to deal with, I would only use cyanide if I had alot of final concentrates under lab conditions,and AR would probably work just as well for small quantities of concentrate. Good luck

hi Bill R.your post is for me The Holy Grail. thanks again .i have given my answer .
best regards
Hussin Naiji

 

[Dunamis]

Good day friends, I've black sand sample assayed with this result attached and whish to request for good info on processing the gold out though the samples were taking fromtailings of local miners after processed with local sluice box in a mines around my place.thank you.

 

[FrugalRefiner]

According to your assay, there was no gold in your sample.

Dave

 

[Dunamis]

hello frugalrefiner, there was a mistake in the file I sent. two samples were sent for analysis the first was to test for zinc in the sample it was a different sample,the second was the tailings of the local miners. I've re attached the results. thanks for the observation.

 

[Platdigger]

If it is truly that rich, smelt it.

 

[Dunamis]

hello platdigger, could smelting the material release all the gold content? I'm initially considering using gold concentrator or any tools tools that can recover the material better

 

[Platdigger]

I don't see why not. You may have to experiment to get the best flux mixture.
Of course you can try concentrating further first. Depending on the size and shape of the gold particles
will lend the ore to concentrate better one way or another.
Have you tried a blue bowl or shaker table? Not sure what you are asking here really.

 

[g_axelsson]

I agree with Platdigger, if it is that rich smelt it with a flux that makes the other minerals fluid. There's enough gold there so you shouldn't need to add any collector metals.

A curious result though, there are no silver or copper in the sample. I thought most placer deposits contained those metals as contaminants in the gold.

Göran

 

[solar_plasma]

I agree with Platdigger, if it is that rich smelt it with a flux that makes the other minerals fluid. There's enough gold there so you shouldn't need to add any collector metals.

A curious result though, there are no silver or copper in the sample. I thought most placer deposits contained those metals as contaminants in the gold.

Göran

And then rich in tantal, maybe this is typical for Nigerian ore?

 

[g_axelsson]

I agree with Platdigger, if it is that rich smelt it with a flux that makes the other minerals fluid. There's enough gold there so you shouldn't need to add any collector metals.

A curious result though, there are no silver or copper in the sample. I thought most placer deposits contained those metals as contaminants in the gold.

Göran

And then rich in tantal, maybe this is typical for Nigerian ore?

Or salted ore... Dunamis, is someone trying to sell you this ore or have you recovered the sample yourself from the mine tailings?

Göran

 

[RGJohn]

hello frugalrefiner, there was a mistake in the file I sent. two samples were sent for analysis the first was to test for zinc in the sample it was a different sample,the second was the tailings of the local miners. I've re attached the results. thanks for the observation.

Goodness, do I read your analysis correctly? Over 61% gold?!?
Or is that reported as an oxide as one column seems to suggest? Still pretty hefty amount. Almost unbelievable. And if this is a tailing, whatever must be the primary concentrate?
Then there appears to be a list of several exotic elemental including rare earths in near phenomenal amounts. I would think anybody with as little as a wheelbarrow full of this stuff would be fixed for life.
Pity that the lab that performed the procedure did not have a piece of stationery with their letterhead on it upon which to report these marvelous results.

 

[Dunamis]

Hello mentors, kind regards for the responses. sincerely, little knowledge available for the local miners here and with my years of experience in precious metals recovery especially in silver recovery from spent fixers and from contacts and the likes,I've been thinking on how to also recover gold from waste materials. searching for these,I've little or no result for years until I was employed to work in a mines where I've opportunity to go through some researches and some threads on this forum where I got good info onvalues in some tailings. the analysis was done in Nigeria Geological survey agency lab with XRF .,it was the result page I scanned and I keep asking my self is it through though I panned the sample taken personally to have the black sand before I sent it to lab. I've little knowledge in refining and that's why I solicit for good info on how to handle this. thanks

 

[Platdigger]

I would not have panned these cons before sending off for a assay.
All you know now is how good your panning was.
Unless of course you plan on panning all your cons the same.
I have an ore that is around 2 grams per ton. I can pan this out or down to just about any concentration I choose to.
So having an assay done to your panned results make very little if any sense.

 

[Dunamis]

I would not have panned these cons before sending off for a assay.
All you know now is how good your panning was.
Unless of course you plan on panning all your cons the same.
I have an ore that is around 2 grams per ton. I can pan this out or down to just about any concentration I choose to.
So having an assay done to your panned results make very little if any sense.

sir, I took 300g of the tailings and panned it ,I was left with 124g weighed and sent for assay. all I was after then was to be sure if it contains gold because at the mines average of 13 - 15tons of the tailings are produce daily

 

[solar_plasma]

Without knowing much about ores I think this is [stt]near to[/stt] implausible. If someone tries to sell those tailings to you, I believe, he wants to scam you or there are other dubious reasons for this. Be sure to take some samples yourself. Just my two cents.

 

[solar_plasma]

Why would anyone leave 20% Au in tailings?? 100 tons (one week production) of those tailings equate to the nominal GDP (52 weeks!) of Nigeria. So, only running those tailings, not the ore itself, for one year, no Nigerian has to work the next 50 years. Gratulations! You solved Africa's problems! Maybe it is a language problem and I didn't get it right, but what I understood sounds like complete nonsens.

 

[Dunamis]

Why would anyone leave 20% Au in tailings?? 100 tons (one week production) of those tailings equate to the nominal GDP (52 weeks!) of Nigeria. So, only running those tailings, not the ore itself, for one year, no Nigerian has to work the next 50 years. Gratulations! You solved Africa's problems! Maybe it is a language problem and I didn't get it right, but what I understood sounds like complete nonsens.

uhmm, well I'm sending the remaining sample for assay in another lab for clarification. I will post the results in the next 3 days

 

[solar_plasma]

Did you collect this sample yourself or did someone give it to you? I believe this sample is a fake.

 

[Dunamis]

Did you collect this sample yourself or did someone give it to you? I believe this sample is a fake.

Solar_plasma, I went on research to the mines and while moving round to see their activities I saw them using locally made sluice box and I picked samples from their tafilings by myself labeled and travelled down to my base.