Mercury and Gold Extraction Process: Dangerous?

[Atticus Finch]

Extracting Gold Using Mercury
Taken from Gold Prospector magazine March, 1995

"I think that if you follow this step by step process, you will find, as many prospectors have, that this is a proven, profitable method for extracting fine gold from concentrates.

Whether you use a gold dredge, sluice box, dry washer, rocker box or most any other type of gold getting apparatus, the concentrates you accumulate in the field should be dumped into five-gallon buckets. Of course, you should pick out all the visible gold then and there.

You should dump the remaining material into the five-gallon buckets and bring them home with you. Even if you have a month to work, don't attempt to set up an operation for cleaning concentrates in the field. Once you get the concentrates home, run them through a poop tube, spinner or wheel, concentrating a five-gallon bucket down to an amount about the size of a quart fruit jar or a three-pound coffee can.

You then put that material into the rock tumbler with some caustic soda (Sodium Hydroxide) and run it for about two or three hours. Add mercury, run another two to three hours. Run the concentrates back through the poop tube, wheel or spinner. Lift out the mercury by inserting a large glob of mercury. Put this into your syringe or your mercury press and squeeze through pure cotton to recover ninety percent of the mercury at this stage.

Deposit the compressed ball of mercury containing your gold into nitric acid in a Pyrex beaker over a hot plate. Let it boil for fifteen minutes. Do this OUTSIDE in a well ventilated area. Be sure you DO NOT BREATHE any of the vapors. Dump that material off into a water-baking soda solution, rinse with clean water and remove the fine gold. Insert a copper rod overnight in the acid waste before disposing of the solution.

This, my friend, is a method for making money each and every time you go out."



BE CAREFUL!! I have found that a 50/50 acid and water solution works well and makes it more cost effective.
Start out with a cold acid solution with the cotton ball in it. Then bring it to a boil. Wear rubber gloves when handling mercury and do not smoke.

After you have experimented with this method, the most cost effective way to use the mercury is to run large quantities of concentrates at one time.

You can also run small amounts and put the mercury back in a used mercury container until the mercury is full of gold. Mercury amalgam will hold two to three times its weight in gold. When the mercury is full of gold, it will look thick and dull in luster.




The following was taken from Van Nostrand's Scientific Encyclopedia Sixth Edition

 

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[patches63]

kuger, guess you meant using a tumbler to clean gold? nowadays i use that vibrating amalgamater that keeene sells,6lb capacity. doesnt spin a drum like a conventional tumbler,just shakes a nice size batch real hard.besides vineagar, sudsing ammonia works,or even simply green.change the dirty vineagar or whatever,once or twice,watch out for floaters when doing this.when the sun is shining, i set the thing out on a table. a little heat just speeds the process.no more stockpiling dirty clothes in order to run my dryer for hours.an older clothes dryer one with some jiggle in its wiggle, pan of red vineagar on top works tho.

 

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[kuger]

Well I meant both methods.I have one of those tumblers,it takes media to clean rifle shell casings.How do you clean gold using one?Do you put liquid in it?Thanks!!!!

 

[beaks]

baking soda works pretty good

 

[patches63]

yep, liquid, no media. red cider vineagar,fresher the better. sudsing yellow ammonia worked for me the other day too. have heard simply green does well also. if this was previously amalgamated gold,id still avoid the fumes just yet.

 

[kuger]

Thanks!!I have been using the hand shake method for years and it is for the birds!!!!

 

[adventurebill]

just to let you know, mercury is a very dangerous metal, that can be absorbed through the skin.
once it's in your body it cannot be removed. high enough concentrations can kill you.
I know commercial gold operations can get it, I don't know if private individuals can though

aadventurebill
Mercury does not absorb through your skin instantly. Elemental mercury does absorb through your skin, but at a very slow pace (I really mean very slowly). As long as you don't expose your skin to the metal too much and you wash your hands after then you would be fine. If any mercury did absorb through your skin then because the amount will be so small then you would urinate it out leaving no mercury in your body meaning it won't build up to harmful amounts. In fact you could absorb more mercury by eating a can of tuna. I'm not trying to build up a false sense of safety with this material, as it's not something you should have out all the time. If you kept exposing yourself everyday even in small amounts could build to harmful amounts in the body, while if it you did it a couple of times a month then it won't build up. And as for the vapor, when the mercury is at room temp then the evaporation rate is only 0.063 ml per hour per cm squared of surface area exposed of mercury.