Filtration in tunnel with high mineral concentration. Feasible?

[Ignium]

Hi all. It´s my first post! I have a question about the fearsibility of taking gold of naturaly leaching water

Rock tunnel below a future gold mine. From over more that one year, there is a little fissure that is pouring 1 liter per secod of (practically) blue water

We pay some studies and find the following results (attached)

As reference

Au: 2 mg/liter
Sulphates: 55000 mg/liter
Fe2+: 10216 mg/liter
PH: 2.1



The easy maths are taking about almost 3Mu$s in leached gold per year. Obviously I don´t know if it´s possible to take it, so here I´am!

 

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[Alex Burke]

Hi welcome to Tnet I started this thread about this subject, careful people might think we're crazy lol, for now I'll stick to a shovel and powersluice but I'm interested in the science of this too.

http://www.treasurenet.com/forums/gold-prospecting/353157-sponge-filters-gold.html

 

[FlatPack]

I'm not a chemist - but from the lab report the solution is pretty acidic.

I would guess you would could neutralize the solution with sodium bicarb or sodium hydroxide, which would probably precipitate all the metals as a fine filterable powder. Filter the powder/sludge from the water, and send the sludge precipitate off to a refiner to separate the gold from the other metals.

Alternatively, you might be able to plate the metals directly out of solution onto an anode.

This is probably a simple question for a college chemistry professor.

 

[DesertNuggets]

Interesting. Pics?

 

[Ignium]

Thanks for the help. I will investigate more.
Take in account that this water have more gold (in orders of magnitude) that sea water, but is ridiculously acid and quite toxic, so I don´t know the fearsibility of use a membrane system.

I read about people that gets X oz of gold / month from water streams in old mines. ¿Someone knows a minnimun ppm of gold for been econmically recoverable??

**************

I just asked a couple of pics to a friend. I will be uploading they soon :-)

 

[russau]

over on MicronGold@yahoogroups.com talk exactly about this subject.

 

[Varun]

P.M.Recovery Systems

you have to pass this solution through activated carbon it will adsorb the gold . Then you have to disrobe gold by passing 1% hot NaOH solution and making the volume small . Now you will get the pregrant gold solution . From this you will recover all the gold by using three dimensional cells made by us.

 

[IMAUDIGGER]

Sounds like a toxic mine.
Would it make sense to approach this from an environment clean up point of view.
Getting paid by the government to profitably treat the toxic water and having the minerals as a byproduct wouldn't be a bad business model?

That could change the feasibility tremendously.