Two ways to save the environment while gold panning
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Gold Leaching Practices
Finding Better Ways to Mine for Gold High Grade Gold Ore and Gold Nuggets General Kinematics
In large scale operations, cyanide is the dominant chemical used in leaching gold from the rocks. Cyanide has made it possible for mining companies to mine low-grade ore bodies for microscopic flecks of gold and silver, and still turn a profit.
In gold mining, cyanide solution is sprayed over vast heaps of crushed ore that is spread atop giant collection pads. The cyanide dissolves the gold from the ore as the solution trickles through the heap. The pad collects the now metal-impregnated solution which is stripped of gold and resprayed on the stacks until the ore is depleted.
A New Way to Extract Gold
As it turns out, the modern solution for a green gold mining operation, without mercury or cyanide, requires nothing more than water, gravity, and skill.
To help the process, modern equipment manufactured by General Kinematics, such as vibrating feeders, screening solutions, grinding & attrition machines, grind, separate, and transport the excavated ore into a sluicing system that begins the real process of separating the gold. The ore passes through a crusher and roller mill until it’s broken down into smaller pieces, then it heads to a shaking table where the tiny flecks of gold are separated out.
Sluices use water to wash the ore or alluvium down a series of angled platforms usually inclined at 5 to 15-degrees. As the water washes the sediment down the sluice, the heavier gold particles sink and are captured by a carpet-like material that covers the bottom. Sluices are good at concentrating large amounts of ore and sediment in a relatively short time but often do not yield concentrates with high amounts of gold. The resulting concentrate must usually undergo further methods of concentration, such as panning.
Panning uses water to separate heavy gold particles from other lighter particles within a medium sized pan. In this process, sediment or ore thought to contain gold is placed in a wide, curved pan along with water. The miner moves the pan in a series of motions designed to eject lighter sediments. The density of gold keeps it on the bottom of the pan as the lighter material is ejected along with water. After a series of successful iterations have been completed, gold will be exposed on the bottom of the pan for the miner to recover.