Mercury Question

[Yukon99669]

I’ve been using Mercury and Nitric Acid to recover super-fines from my cons. I’m not looking for a lecture on the dangers...I know what they are and I take extreme precautions.

I don’t have trouble panning most of my +70 material. Below that it gets a bit too tedious for my patience. My -70, -100, -150 cons I use my Blue Bowl and get it to about 80% clean. I then tumble the cons overnight w/ “pure lye” (Sodium Hydroxide). ...then rinse. Then the whole Mercury & Nitric Acid routine.

I’ve come across some gold here and there in the 70 mesh range that never got picked up w/ the mercury. Is there a typical limit to the size of gold that this method is effective with? ...or are there other factors that would allow me to use this method for larger gold? Is Lye as good as anything else for cleaning before Mercury?

I tend to have A LOT of -70 gold and A LOT of pyrite on my claims, making it a PITA to deal with the Super-fines...is there a better overall process for handling this?

 

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[Reed Lukens]

It's always best to charge your mercury before placing it, if you want it to grab the most gold.

 

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[Bonaro]

OK, I have another quick question...

I picked up a couple of these smallish "Pure Copper" Bowls off of Amazon.

I coated 1 of the bowls w/ Mercury by wiping on a 50/50 Nitric Acid/Distilled Water solution that contains mercury. So essentially a very thin layer of Mercury on the Copper bowl.

I cleaned some -70 cons with "Muriatic Acid" (Hydrochloric Acid). ....Then rinsed with Distilled Water.

Should I expect any Gold in these cons to simply "stick" to the Mercury in my Copper Bowl at this point?

Also, will Heating up the bowl outside on a Hot Plate be sufficient to get rid of the Mercury and leave me w/ Gold?

I've tried the above scenario w/ material from un-proven ground. ...So the Gold either isn't there, or my process is missing something.

If the process seems legit, I'll try it again using better material.

What you have created is called a sickening plate. The old timers did this in their sluices to catch the fine gold. Unfortunately, when the Hg would get loaded (the plates are sick) with gold, it tended to peel off from the water action and the gold and mercury was lost in the tails. This is one of the point sources of mercury contamination in our waterways today. Heating the bowls will work but you will lose all of your Hg and contaminate everything in the area. It would be far safer to squeegee the amalgam out of the bowls and reclaim with acid or retort.
Personally, I would not do this at all due to the certainty of Hg loss.
I can think of several ways to do this more efficiently and safely.

The thing I have a problem with is your idea to heat the bowls outside to vaporize the Hg and liberate the gold. In your original post you stated that you were very aware of the dangers of Mercury use and practiced extreme precautions. This post makes me think you really don't and are just messing around.
You really need to STOP what you are doing and get in front of the contamination and poisoning risk you are creating.

The best process is one where the Hg is used in a closed system (rock tumbler, retort)