Is it true there is gold in the sea(not treasure ship stuff natural)

[strike it rich]

I heard off a my uncle whom heard off his friends friend that sea water contains minute particles of gold but the cost of extracting it is worth more than the gold is worth is this true and how would one go about doing it on a small scale ie a couple of pints of sea water at a time and how much sea water would I need to get a tonne of gold thanks ps how long and worth how much after extracting costs

[aarthrj3811]

Hey strike it rich....There is gold in some sea water...Be careful as there are a lot scams about how to recover it...Art

[gallileo60]

I heard off a my uncle whom heard off his friends friend that sea water contains minute particles of gold but the cost of extracting it is worth more than the gold is worth is this true and how would one go about doing it on a small scale ie a couple of pints of sea water at a time and how much sea water would I need to get a tonne of gold thanks ps how long and worth how much after extracting costs

Grandpa on the Munsters fixxed a scam gold extracting machine once......

[Ascholten]

The munsters. Oh wow i remember that show and that episode, god it's been probably close to 30 years ago when I seen it... :P Oh, and he was trying to get the uranium out of the water, and kept getting that crap gold instead and was throwing it on a growing pile.

You would have to do several tons of sea water to get an ounce of gold, I think it's like 100 tons or something insane like that. I cant remember where I seen it but a company that filters water for something or deionizes it or whatever, their process, filtering gold would only be a minor shift or addition to what they had to do already to their process. They tried to do it to see if it was profitable, ended up not worth the effort put into it in the long run.

Even if you dried the water out, youd have tons of salt now, which the gold and everything else would be in.

aaron

[ping]

There is no gold in seawater. It's impossible. Think of the density of gold (very heavy) and seawater (not as heavy). Any gold would immediately drop out.

Ping

[gollum]

There is no gold in seawater. It's impossible. Think of the density of gold (very heavy) and seawater (not as heavy). Any gold would immediately drop out.

Ping

Hey Ping,

It's not the type of gold you're thinking about. Well......it is and it isn't.

You can buy a gold plating kit. This includes an electrolyte that contains gold in suspension. When you hang a metal object in the electrolyte, and put a positive current through it while putting a negative current into the solution, the gold molecules gather on the hanging metal object (I may have the nodes reversed, but you get the idea). That covers the object with a thin layer of gold.

That same type of gold is suspended in most all water on the Earth. All those scam machines sound convincing, but the cost of recovering one ounce of gold from seawater is many times what you could buy it for (as far as I know). If anybody knows of any equipment that actually works, please let me know. Me and the rest of the world would like to pick this equipment up.

Best-Mike

[BILL96]

Sea water or any water could probably contain gold just as easy as water can contain lead,copper or any other metal. While It does remain is a soultion it can certainly be there. Lead in drinking water can be a very serious problam.
Bill

[Jeffro]

Yes.

[ivan salis]

yes there is gold in saltwater (it and other dissolved metals & minerals are what make detectors act squirrelly at the beach) but the cost to filter it out is more than its worth -- at this time with any known equiptment --- Ivan

[Ascholten]

There is gold in sea water, and silver, and platinum, and pretty much just about any other metal you could want. It (gold)is concentrated generally from a fraction to maybe a milligram or two per ton of water... to get an ounce of gold..... you put way too much money into it for what you get out.

A company tried it once as a subprocess of one of it's main process' I believe it was a water purification plant or something like that, they figured that, with just one extra step in their current process, they could get the gold out of the water.... it wasn't worth the effort when was all said and done, too much time, money and effort put into it... so they scrapped the plans.

There have been some experiments using bacteria to help concentrate this gold for easier reclaimation, but at this point in time, the technology to do this efficiently is not even close.

Aaron

[AuExplorer]

There is gold in sea water, and silver, and platinum, and pretty much just about any other metal you could want. It (gold)is concentrated generally from a fraction to maybe a milligram or two per ton of water... to get an ounce of gold..... you put way too much money into it for what you get out.

A company tried it once as a subprocess of one of it's main process' I believe it was a water purification plant or something like that, they figured that, with just one extra step in their current process, they could get the gold out of the water.... it wasn't worth the effort when was all said and done, too much time, money and effort put into it... so they scrapped the plans.

There have been some experiments using bacteria to help concentrate this gold for easier reclaimation, but at this point in time, the technology to do this efficiently is not even close.

Aaron

Bio leaching is making leaps and bounds with sulphide ores, The problem with gold extraction from sea water is the size of the gold, micro aquatic life clogs the micron filters very quickly. Attempts have been made to classify the organisms out centrifugally. They have had only unprofitable moderate success. They have made attempts to remove the gold that resides in the sea water itself on a molecular scale, PPT parts per trillion. No real success.

Back to Bio leaching....Very interesting stuff to the point of making scientists reevaluate certain ore deposits and their formation. There is a strong misconception about what the Extremophiles do, The organisms love sulphide ores which are basically iron based. The organisms devour the gaunge material and leave the gold at an astonishing rate. a couple of tons over a 24 hour period. The gold and Extremophiles solution is then filtered and fired leaving the organisms very hungry for the next batch. There is also a company using the organisms in cyanide heap leaching with great success as they need a very pH environment which cyanide provides. It should be noted that these organisms do already reside in the ore deposit itself, Man only increases their numbers to do in hours what would normally take them years.

This is the abridged version guys just before bed, so you have to excuss me.

[gmstreet]

You can buy a gold plating kit. This includes an electrolyte that contains gold in suspension. When you hang a metal object in the electrolyte, and put a positive current through it while putting a negative current into the solution, the gold molecules gather on the hanging metal object (I may have the nodes reversed, but you get the idea). That covers the object with a thin layer of gold.

Why not try electroplating something using the sea water as the electrolyte solution. I'm no chemist but maybe there would be some way to extract the gold by running a low voltage current through the sea water using some sort of metal as a cathode that would attract the gold to it. You would have to research what metals would accept the gold the easiest without accepting to many other trace metals. Maybe you could submerge a rare earth magnet in the water for a day or two before you started the electrolysis, to remove any magnetite that would be in the water. After you plated your cathode within the gold you just remove the plating. I know there has to be some techniques for unplating gold out there. Just an idea...

[aarthrj3811]

There used to be a group on Yahoo that had a lot of information on this…Sorry I don’t have the address….Art

[Ascholten]

gmstreet. If it was really that easy, don't you think someone would be doing it already?

First off, the currents needed to 'remove' specific metals from the water are very picky. Secondly, all the other crap in there, salt, other metals, just to name a few things would make it difficult at best.

Finally, as said before you'd need to run several hundred if not thousands of TONS of water to get an ounce of gold... the cost of pumping that kind of water, then the time to let it electrolysis out, not to mention the seperating of the other crap first to let it work.... nope won't work...... at least not cost effectively that is...

sorry
Aaron

[gmstreet]

gmstreet. If it was really that easy, don't you think someone would be doing it already?

Actually, I'm a bit skeptical about the whole gold in the sea water thing. As I said before I'm no chemist, I'm just throwing out theories. Somebody said before, they figured the dense gold would drop out of the less dense sea water. I'd have to agree with that one. But as far as being that easy... how many times have you all said dang why didn't I think of that, when your watching the worlds latest millionare talk about his overly simple idea to Larry King.


"Do or Do Not, There's No Try"
Master Yoda

[Ascholten]

well if the dense gold would just drop out of the water (obviously someone doesn't know much about dissolved metals in solution).... then it would all be sitting on the ocean floor by now just waiting for someone to sweep it up...

Aaron

[gmstreet]

Just googled, "gold in seawater".. WHOA!!! What a hot topic. First off let me say I don't know crap about dissolved metals in water. But I know a little more now from reading some of the googled results. Most of the articles go along with Ivan Salis and Aschloten. There is gold in seawater, but not cost effective to get. Thanks guys for inspiring me to learn something new today.

Greg

[transplant]

during WW2 DuPont had a plant at kure beach n.c. that remove mineral from sea water, if you lived in that area in the 50's you could see the intake on the ocean side 'and the plant was located on the river side.as late as the70's they kept a test station on the beach side testing metal as to how they resisted rust. it was a go place to go at night , an watch the rust

[transplant]

add this to my post above, yes there is gold in sea water as well as about any other mineral you can think of

[U.K. Brian]

There is also a means of recovering minute (undetectable) gold from land sites that involves growing a plant that takes up gold particles into itself whilst growing. The "crop" was then gathered/dried and burnt and the gold recovered from the ash.