"Black gold" synthesis

Hello FugacityMan,

The Gold Sulphide from which the pure metal is made, is the result of gold compounds and pure gold being dissolved from the Continental shelf deposits, washed down rivers into seawater, and acted upon by microbes as it sinks further into the ocean-bottom ooze.

Ages pass, further layers compressing the material, which is composed of various substances, including the two you are interested in.

Sea-floor spreading continues, in its slow travellator way, and eventually that sea-floor plate, because it is heavier, is rafted below a continental plate raft, and disappears into the mantle of the Earth's crust.

As the old sea-floor plate sinks down, heat increases, both from friction of the two plates grinding past each other, and the interior furnace further down.

The process causes a type of slow fractional distillation within the sinking sea-floor plate, and minerals rise, into and through the lighter Continental Crustal Plate, perhaps with a volcano or two, and are deposited into lens-shaped collections, which we would call a "mother lode", should we find one.

So all that time, until the mother lode is found, there are bacteria, enzymes, pressure, heat, and other forces acting to produce gold nuggets and/or gold compounds including sulphides, plus mixtures of silver etc, which end up in the mother lode.

So...the processes take geological ages.

It may be possible to reverse the reaction, but at present the method of so doing, escapes me.

Kind Regards....

Hi FugacityMan.

Gold is never found as a sulphide! It is one of the native elements (Au, Pt and sometimes Ag and Cu), and mostly appears in nature in it's pure form. It can be found alloyed with other native elements such as Silver (the mineral is called Electrum), and also rarely with copper.

Some Silver, Copper, Nickel and Lead sulphide ores have Gold in them ( a few %), but it is never alloyed to them! The Gold content in these ores appear as minute diseminated grains within the sulphide!!!

Spencer.

Hello Scapolie

Please read this, about bacteria processing of natural Gold Sulphide:

"The world's largest bacteria plant is planned for Wiluna in Western Australia. The bacteria are expected to process some 400,000 tonnes of gold sulphide per year. Gold-mining has always used rather toxic chemicals to extract the gold. The bacteria should be cleaner."

Weblink for above: http://www.abc.net.au/science/k2/trek/4wd/Over43.htm

Kind Regards....

Yea that toxic chemical they're talking about is mercury.

Hi Sparky.

I don't think that you have read the artical correctly! Nowhere in the artical has it mentioned "Gold Sulphide", it mentions correctly "Copper Sulphide" ( Cu2 S, CuS, Cu5 FeS4, Cu Fe S2 and Cu Fe2 S3 ), all of these are copper sulphides that can be found in the Austrailian deposits!!!

If you read correctly what I wrote in my last post, you will see that gold does not form a chemical bond with sulphur!!!

What the artical does mention is the bacterialogical degradation of the copper or iron sulphides, ie the bacteria eats the sulphur content of these sulphides leaving the near pure metal (Cu or Fe), as the gold is not in a chemical bond with these metals the gold which is diseminated thoughout these metal sulphides will be left as a residual native element.

I hope that you will not argue with me on this one as I am a fully trained Mineralogist, and I studied the elements and combinations thereof.

Spencer.

I understand that the hydrothermal fluids that consist of H2O, SO2,CO2,FeS, CuS, AsS and other surface rock dragged under the continent via subduction are lighter than the rock at depth, thus they rise and slowly pass through the rock as bubbles of lighter rising through denser.

As they go by the granites and basalts they gradually extract trace amounts of gold, copper, silver etc. Often a host rock will be 1 part per billion or so of gold. The fluid is a better solvent and this means that in equilibrium contact with granit, basalt etc it will have a concentration hundreds of time that in the host rock. The host rock gets depleted of these minerals and the HF fluid rises. As the pressure drops, the solvency of this metarial drops and often some volatiles turn to gasses and flash off.

The remaining fluid cannot hold the minerals in solution, so they precitpitate. Gold forms fines particels that are often surrounded by FeS shells.

You can roast the shells off and grind them off, or use bacterial to remove the shells. It all depends on the grade.

Large open heaps can be treated by grinding down to some level and then using a refirculating media seeded with bacteria. These are tightly covered to limit air access so the oxygen is depleted as most of these suphur eaters are killed by O2 (some are not) Over a few months this liquid is spread over the pile and repumped over and over again to keep them wet and is gets seedings of fresh bacteria if needed.

After a while, you change the fluid to a weak cyanide and that extracts the gold over a few months.

Each deposit needss to be studied and test grinds done to get the optimum start position. Etra grinding costs $$, grinding too fine causes blockages and channelling. Best is a uniform grade, like aquarium gravel or larger.

Once the pile is done it is placed in a tailings pond or used by industry if it does not emit and residual acid drainage?

These sites hold lots of reading

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&sa=X&oi=spell&resnum=0&ct=result&cd=1&q=sulfide+%2B%22bacterial+leaching%22&spell=1

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=gold+%2B%22bacterial+leaching%22&btnG=Search

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=gold+%2B%22heap+leaching%22&btnG=Search

Hello Scapolie

"I don't think that you have read the artical correctly! Nowhere in the artical has it mentioned "Gold Sulphide""

Excuse me for advising you in this way, as I don't wish to appear rude or confrontational, but I don't think you read either my Post or the article correctly.

The bold Italicised text as quoted in my post http://cr4.globalspec.com/comment/165863/Re-Black-gold-synthesis

was copy/pasted direct from the article on the webpage quoted.

That part referring to Gold Suplhide being processed in large quantities by bacteria, is found at the bottom of the article, which I shall Copy/paste here for you.

Perhaps you were distracted, or your eyes got tired, and you missed it, so I have underlined it below for you:

"But the bacteria saved the day. In the mid-80s smelting cost about $75 per pound of copper. Bacteria did the same job for less than $30 per pound. In the 90s, 30% of the copper produced in the US is mined by bacteria.

The world's largest bacteria plant is planned for Wiluna in Western Australia. The bacteria are expected to process some 400,000 tonnes of gold sulphide per year. Gold-mining has always used rather toxic chemicals to extract the gold. The bacteria should be cleaner.

But the bacteria have one major weakness. They don't know how important it is to get a quick profit. They're very clean, and they're very cheap - but they're very slow at purifying copper. They take decades to do what conventional processing does in years.

Maybe a school-kid will genetically engineer some super-bacteria to do the metal-mining more rapidly.

Copyright © Karl S. Kruszelnicki"

I do hope that clarifies the situation for you.

It refers to 400,000 tonnes of Gold Sulphide per year being processed by bacteria to extract the gold.

Now this would not be done, unless it was going to work, because that would be a great waste of money, time and resources, don't you agree.

I am willing to be corrected, but those large processing plants in China are extracting gold from gold sulphides too.

Sometimes we read what we think is there, rather than reading what is actually printed, it is quite a common thing to do.

Perhaps you may care to restate your position........

Thank you for taking the time to read this reply.

Kind Regards....

So, let me get this straight. I just searched for "gold sulphide" (in quotes) and came up with 4180 hits. Also, I note the original poster was asking about "gold sulphide".

I'm sorry, but I just cannot see how that is any evidence that gold sulphide might exist.

Look how easily the following paragraph can be changed:

Before:

"The world's largest bacteria plant is planned for Wiluna in Western Australia. The bacteria are expected to process some 400,000 tonnes of gold sulphide per year. Gold-mining has always used rather toxic chemicals to extract the gold. The bacteria should be cleaner."

After:

"The world's largest bacteria plant is planned for Wiluna in Western Australia. The bacteria are expected to process some 400,000 tonnes of something that does not exist per year. Gold-mining has always used rather toxic chemicals to extract the gold. The bacteria should be cleaner."

If that is not proof that the existence of gold sulphide is tenuous at best, what is? Here one minute, gone the next.

Does this depend upon the meaning of "is"?

(Sorry Scapolie, for my humor at your expense.)

Reactions of gold:

http://www.webelements.com/webelements/elements/text/Au/chem.html

Hi Ken.

No need to be sorry, I read your post and enjoyed it. But as you have realised, Gold does not form a Sulphide!?!?!?

It might be mixed in with a metalic Sulphide, but the original post said "GOLD SULPHIDE!".

Gold can form a salt with Cl as in Au Cl3, but as I said, gold does not appear as a sulphide!!!!!!!!!!!

Spencer.

Hello again Scapolie

It's not just me who does not accept your statement re "But as you have realised, Gold does not form a Sulphide!?!?!?"

Have a read of this Post by Svengali:

http://cr4.globalspec.com/comment/166265/Re-Black-gold-synthesis

There is a vast amount of evidence, easily discovered and read, stating that gold does naturally form Sulphides.

Hope that clears it up, for once and for all.

As found in nature, gold does form Sulphides.

Kind Regards....

Hide this link from the other guys:

http://www.webelements.com/webelements/elements/text/Au/comp.html

and this one:

http://www.webelements.com/webelements/compounds/text/Au/Au2S1-1303602.html

and this one:

http://www.webelements.com/webelements/compounds/text/Au/Au2S3-1303613.html

But other than those, there is no a lot of evidence, provided we ignore the 4180 hits on Google. Please keep this secret.

Hi,

this is more complicated as you do not want to reduce the sulphide to elemental gold as this would be very fine dispersed material not ready to recover.

What is really done is making a solution of gold as either chloride or as a gold salt of an organic acid.

I am not sure if the basics are clear today.

I heard about the gold-miners wastes (washed by classical goldmining) in Ouro Preto in Brazil. After 300 years simple deposited there without any other activity except rain and time and likely some bacteria the concentration in the bottom parts were raised to a valuable degree.

So I think there will be a leaching stage and a precipitation stage. Leaching with chlorine or chloride and precipitation with iron or zinc.

Leaching with the help of bacteria (as most uranium is mined this way now!)

RHABE

Fugacityman,

If you add H2S to a gold solution, Au2S3 will precipitate. If you Google around, you will see references to methods of synthesis.

I haven't done a lot of research, but I would think that you could dissolve the gold in aqua regia, then add H2S to form the compound.

Tad

Gold sulfide certainly does exist (although I have no idea how much occurs in nature). The CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics lists two forms: gold(I) sulfide (Au₂S) and gold(III) sulfide (Au₂S₃). You can order both compounds from Aldrich. Many people don't realize gold forms compounds. This is understandable since we all learned in school that gold is the least reactive metal (true). Likewise for the noble gases -- yes, even they can form compounds. Even the most unreactive elements participate in chemistry if conditions are severe enough. But then our intuition correctly tells us that compounds of gold and the noble gases are very unstable.

Back to the original question: how to make gold sulfide?

Reacting gold(I) chloride (AuCl) with sodium sulfide (Na₂S) should work:

2 AuCl + Na₂S ---> Au₂S + 2 NaCl

Sure enough, after a quick Google search I found a citation:

http://pubs.acs.org/cgi-bin/abstract.cgi/langd5/2002/18/i02/abs/la011186y.html

You didn't mention which of the two gold chlorides you want. If you seek gold(III) sulfide, you will probably need to use a different approach -- I found no mention of a synthesis using sodium sulfide:

2 AuCl₃ + 3 Na₂S ---> Au₂S₃ + 6 NaCl

I did however find one hit mentioning the reaction of gold(III) acetate with elemental sulfur (S):

2 Au(CH₃COO)₃ + 3 S ---> Au₂S₃ + organic byproducts

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6VM7-49NRVBG-3&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=6aea8d58e37df0be8a692708636e2ce0

Yes, but this is not a naturally occuring substance!

Spencer.

Hello again Scapolie

I do realize you are a learned mineralogist, and may have the experience of years in that specific field.

But just because you have not seen Gold Sulphide in Nature does not mean it cannot exist.

You have not travelled the World, to establish the truth of what you state re "Gold Sulphide not occurring in Nature".

There are presently Companies, making vast fortunes, using the above listed bacterial processing of Gold Sulphide, and should you care to read and understand, you may learn about it.

Perhaps you are located in the US, where Sulphide is spelled as "Sulfide", which may be causing part of the misunderstanding evinced.

Kind Regards...as always....

Gold sulfide (British spelling: sulphide) *does* occur in nature. The link I found mentions its presence in hot spring water (maybe requires very high temperatures to form?)

Here I provide the key excerpt:

The breakthrough in understanding the transport and deposition of gold came from experiments carried out by Terry Seward, then of the DSIR's Chemistry Division. In the early 1970s, Seward showed that gold sulphide complexes were much more soluble than gold alone, in the conditions prevailing in geothermal fields. Seward pinned down three types of complex that enhance the solubility of gold. If the water is acid, gold dissolves as the neutral complex Au(HS); in neutral water Au(HS)^2- predominates and under alkaline conditions Au₂(HS)₂S^2- is the dominant gold species in solution.

Note that Au(HS) and Au₂(HS)₂S^2-contain gold in the +1 oxidation state, therefore these are true ionic sulfides, not merely electrically neutral gold metal atoms surrounded by sulfide ligands. See the link below for the full article (fascinating stuff for transition-metal loving chemists like me!). I wish I lived near hot springs -- I could then try chemically extracting gold as mentioned in the article. Anyone living in Alaska or the western continental U.S. want to hire me?

The successful alchemist: Water heated by volcanoes can release gold from ordinary rocks, a feat of natural alchemy that has revealed the complexity of chemistry deep in the Earth

• 10 August 1991
• From New Scientist Print Edition
• BRUCE YARDLEY

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg13117814.300-the-successful-alchemist-water-heated-by-volcanoes-canrelease-gold-from-ordinary-rocks-a-feat-of-natural-alchemy-that-hasrevealed-the-complexity-of-chemistry-deep-in-the-earth.html

Thank you svengali

For the further definitive proof, and much of it very local, right here in New Zealand.

I had read years ago, about gold sulphide and other precipitates in geothermal power station waste water, which caused complications at New Zealand's North Island Geothermal Power Stations located above a very large active volcanic hot zone.

"There is no doubt that a major factor in this advance has been the collaborative work by the geologists and chemists of the New Zealand DSIR in investigating natural geothermal systems and experimenting on mineral solubilities."

So I'll not be eating my proverbial hat, after all.

Kind Regards....

Glad to help with this very interesting topic, enjoyed looking into it (thanks FugacityMan for posting the original question). If you didn't live on the opposite side of the planet, I would propose that we go into business together and set up an electrochemical plant to extract gold from your local hot springs. In addition to the gold, we could earn additional income by running the "effluent" from our operation into hot tubs for Australian tourists. Yes, counting my gold while drinking cold beers in a mineral spring hot tub -- sounds like a good plan. Seriously though, since I already do electro-chemistry as a hobby, I plan to look into such a process, even if I only have ordinary sea water to work with (others have already tried it and found it uneconomical, but I'm not ready to give up).

Thank you all for the information :-)

One last thing: I understand the point made by Scapolie. I think that the vast majority of naturally occurring gold exists as *metallic* gold specks interspersed into minerals consisting of sulfides of other metals. The term "gold sulfide" is probably often used when referring to these ores which contain no actual gold sulfide. So he was mostly correct that in stating that gold sulfide does not occur naturally (it does occur, but in relatively small quantities under special conditions). If I understood the results of my searches correctly, the gold sulfide compounds found in hot spring water are more the exception than the rule. If true gold sulfide compounds actually exists in large solid deposits anywhere, please let me know where

Hello again svengali,

There is plenty and easy to locate:

"In every cubic mile of sea water there is 25 tons of gold! That's a total of about 10 billion tons of gold in the oceans; however, there's no known way to economically recover it."

Refer: Gold Prospecting with the new 49ers

I remember during WW2, that Germany was trying to find an economical way to extract useful minerals from ordinary seawater.

The World's minerals and elements are being slowly and constantly recycled, albeit at a slow rate.

As an aside, when my children were much smaller, I had read up on all available NZ geological books, texts and publications.

I worked out where I would start a gold mine, at Macraes Flat, North Otago, South Island, about 150 miles from where I live.

Many years later, a major Company started the digging of a giant pit, at exactly the same place, using the same reasoning.

The only reason I am not presently a multi-millionaire, is that I did not have the NZ$150,000,000 Capital needed to dig the pit, pay the infrastructure and establishment costs, until the operation showed a profit.

Kind Regards....

Hi Svengali,

did you ever think about possibilities to start your extraction with used printed circuit boards and connectors?

There is ample metallic gold in these, much more than in natural sources and pretty cheap.

RHABE

Hi RHABE,

Well known methods do allow for separation of gold from the other metals present in circuit boards (mainly copper, tin, lead, and silver). A friend of mine who worked for years soldering boards saved up many gold-plated boards for this purpose, but hasn't done anything with them yet. I have considered trying my hand at recovering gold from used circuit boards, but I'm not sure if I want to deal with the resulting toxic wastes (lead, contaminated strong acids, and miscellaneous organic wastes from oxidized plastics). Do any of you CR4 members have any experience with this? Actually, this sounds like an excellent question for a new thread.

Hi Svengali,

I know about these methods but as you I don't like the byproducts.

So there should be a process found from the here accumulated information to etch (with bacterial help or not) the gold without attacking the other metals.

I know this seems to be impossible.

Is there any possibility to etch the interface between gold and underlying copper or brass? Then the gold will be metallic and intact but ready to get loose by scraping or blasting from the underneath metal. (That can be recycled too, but on a big scale plant).

RHABE

I know about these methods but as you I don't like the byproducts.

And I forgot to mention that the waste stream would probably include cyanide!

So there should be a process found from the here accumulated information to etch (with bacterial help or not) the gold without attacking the other metals.

I know this seems to be impossible.

Seems very unlikely that a simple one-step chemical reaction could selectively etch gold from a mixture of metals. Any reagent strong enough to oxidize gold will oxidize ALL of the metals present. But the idea of using bacteria to achieve selectivity sounds interesting. Nothing like nature's nano-technology for accomplishing miracles!

Is there any possibility to etch the interface between gold and underlying copper or brass? Then the gold will be metallic and intact but ready to get loose by scraping or blasting from the underneath metal. (That can be recycled too, but on a big scale plant).

RHABE

Selectively de-laminating the gold film would certainly be the way to go (immediately vastly reducing the mass to process). Even de-laminating the other metals along with the gold (without oxidation) would be a big improvement over the methods I've heard of. But I imagine that the oxides and other "glue" holding the metal films to the board must be difficult to reach by simple chemical diffusion -- perhaps we would need to shred the boards first, creating quite a mess. Actually I can't judge it since I don't know enough about the de-lamination approach you suggest. I would need to research the precise binding chemistries used. In principle it sounds feasible.

svengali

They take the boards and burn them in a furnace with a bag house to collect particles. They add a weighed charge of copper and some flux. Might be 200 pounds of copper and 40 pounds of flux. The phenolic burns off and adds to the heat. The fiberglass melts into the flux.

The temperature of the melt is above copper melting temp. All silver, gold, lead, tin and many other metals report to the copper(end up there = report). Steel does not melt. Platinum end of at the bottom or in the copper. The steel is screened off and the copper decanted into molds and the flux goes onto the slag pile, later trace metals can be gotten from it by flotation after milling, varies with the slag.

The copper bars are weighed and assayed, the original weight of copper added is deducted and the client is paid for each element above a minimum. Client is also charge a refining fee per pound.

Old boards, pre-1980 can be worth $100/pound, Back planes even mre.

After gold went high in the 80's, it's use was minimized by the use of nickel under plating. This allowed 1 microinch of gold for pins and edge connectors. Mil-spec was and is 50 microinches. Commercial spec was 10 over copper, now is 1 over nickel over copper.

1 over copper has so much intermetallic diffusion that there is surface corrosin colored green in a year. Nickel blocks this as the metals do not interdiffues.

I have recycled over 100,000 pound of boards in the past 20 years = a good business if you get old boards. New CPUs are good. New mother boards = 1 microinch, not worth scrapping by fire, but they can be gold scrapped by a degreasing followed by a cyanide wash, follwed by a scavenge of liquid.

CPUs must be melted and the Au is not accessible to liquids.

Hi aurizon,

Thanks for the detailed description. Does industrial gold recovery usually start with burning the boards? I am more familiar with the simpler approach of using aqua regia or cyanide salts to dissolve the gold directly from the boards -- something within the reach of a small operation (although it might miss some of the platinum present). In the method you described, is pure gold recovered from the copper alloy by chemical dissolution/precipitation, or is some kind of electro-deposition also useful here?

well, if you want a costly and very nasty process, aqua regia will do it. Industrial grade nitric and hydrochloric will get at the exposed gold and will also grab all other exposed metals. Hidden metals in ICs or flux covered will not be recovered.

Cyanide is the cheapest way to recover gold from plated materials, followed by zinc dust precipitation of the gold by replacement. The sludge that drops out with the unreacted zinc is then refined.

Process is usually done in alkaline cyanide at 140-160F. acid cyanide emits HCN = gas chamber killing zone in your house. Cyanide is dangerous and you need to wear impermeable clothes and a mask while using it. Industrially you have to conform to a tightly regulated setup, but it is the winner for naked grease free gold.

In the burning process, the furnace uses the burning of the boards to create heat to help melt the copper in the furnace. The flux is a wetting agent and the process is done on a large scale in Rouyan Quebec where Noranda has the largest compter scrap recycler in Canada. They charge so much per pound, and for large lots they are cheapest. But they are huge. if you have 1000 pounds of boards you must first process them mechanically to remove all steel, aluminum, transformers and large parts with no gold....why pay $2 per pound to extract gold from transformers which contain no gold. Typically 50% of the board weight is removed prior to processing...it varies, some boards need zero processing.

Thanks for the additional details. Yes, I agree, aqua regia creates some nasty waste. And I would definitely not try working with acidic cyanide solutions (of course even alkaline cyanide requires careful handling). Overall, this sort of project does not sound appropriate for a small-scale hobbyist. I can just imagine what Homeland Security would think about me trying to order sodium cyanide through the mail (actually, legitimate companies would not sell it to me anyway). I don't really want to mess around with aqua regia -- too many fumes and potential for serious chemical burns. Guess I'll leave circuit board processing to the professionals. I could always try to extract gold from sea water instead.

there is a lot of any element in sea water. If you have electricity at 5 cents per kilowatt hour and 100% efficient pumps, and you pump the sea water up a hill of one foot and the process magically recovers all the gold as it goes over the hill, the value of the gold recovered will not cover the cost of the electricity to do the pumping.

Some guys are playing with algae to bioconcentrate assorted metal ions into their cellular mass, but it is very hard to find an algae that must have gold and thus selects it from the water because gold has no known reation in any plant/animal as an essential nutrient....mainly 'cause gold does not react with anything much and so nothing evolved to use it.

some stuff to read further here.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=bioconcentration+%2Bmetal+%2Balgae+%2Bgold&btnG=Search

Interestingly, wild mustard (Raphae spp.) will uptake metals, including some nasty toxic ones like selenium. It's been used to remove such metals from hazardous waste disposal sites (pre EPA ones), and I think I recall reading a few years back that it will also sequester gold, silver, etc. At the end of the growing season it is burned, and the metals recovered from the ash. It'll grow on some of the worst salt flats and other marginal land, so might be adaptable to salt-water hydroponics... Don't know that anyone's ever tried that.

Hi EnviroMan,

there are reports that also equisetum (wild horsetail) and peas are also concentrating metals.

Peas especially for selenium. Equisetum is proven to concentrate gold 200fold in the ash. I have no idea if this gold is in soluble condition or being brought into solution by the plants.

RHABE

I don't know either, but if it's 200X, it ought to be worth a try!

Wow! Lively debate!

C'mon folks, don't sugar coat it. Let's hear how you really feel!

Sparky .. you gonna let them get away with that??!

Scap ... I wouldn't take that! Take the gloves off!

Hello Out of Box Experience

".....sugar coat it....."

I'm not sure why you referred to sugar, because that term does not appear in the Thread, which discusses the relationship between Gold and Gold Sulphide.

Refined sugar has been proven to be a cell poison, and should be carefully avoided, like the plague, by those desiring to remain in good health.

The Candy sold in the US, has been shown to cause major damage to children.

Anyway, to get back to the point...where was I....Oh yes:

It's nothing to do with feelings or emotions, and I don't intend to resort to fisticuffs.

It's not happening in a sparring match, as far as I'm concerned.

I endeavour to deal with facts, logic and sometimes folks get those blurred, preferring opinion or "factoids"..

If my statements are incorrect, then I shall gladly apologise, learn from the experience, and move on, a wiser man.

That's what we all do, isn't it?

Kind Regards....

Hi Sparky,

As the Aussisies have 4000,000 tonnes of this stuff could you persuade them to let us have a gram or two so we can have it analysed?

Apologies for dragging this esoteric discussion to a practical level.

Hello oldeng

Your apologies re "dragging" are accepted.

You seem to have misread the Post re quantity, which you have listed above in a multiple of 10x as 4000,000 tonnes, because the quantity originally mentioned was 400,000 tonnes.

I know it's easy to blame the spell-checker, as an old Associate of mine, Merlin by name, used to do that whenever his potions refused to work in the intended manner.

Apart from that, getting to the nub, so to speak...... The Australia operations are located in Western Australia, some 5,000 miles away from me, with 1,200 miles of the stormy gale-tossed Tasman Sea between New Zealand and Australia, which gets me to Sydney.

A very long train trip, taking a couple of days and more, would get me to Perth, and then I still need to get to the mining operations.

My passport expired many years ago, and I did not bother to renew it.

Apart from those difficulties, I have no problem with obtaining a sample, or two, and my Special Associate in Lagos, Nigeria, is willing to dialogue with you re your deposit fee towards the warranted sample.

Kind Regards....

No, I assumed that to set up a process they must have around ten years reserves,so that's where I got my estimate of material.

Have a look at BIOX website,they are the company that license the bacterial process you refer to,e.g.at Wiluna.

You will see that the process releases elemental gold from a matrix of mineral sulphides principally pyrite,arsenopyrite and pyrrhotite,which ENCAPSULATE the elemental gold.

They do not mention any gold 'compounds',and they should know.

I think you are a victim of a journalist failing to understand and properly report the details of the process involved,whats new?

I'm sure I could get a local Wilunian (pop about 1800 I believe) to get me a sample,and post it off to me,should only take a few days and the cost of a couple of cans of Fosters.

Dont have a smiley with a grin and webfeet,but spring is coming.

Hi oldeng.

That is what I have been trying to tell the people on this discussion, but some of them seem to believe everthing that jounalists write! If you read my other posts you will see that I have written nealy the same as you.

Spencer.