Amalgamation Processes

In gold placer mining, in which minute specks of gold are washed from sand or gravel deposits, mercury was often used to separate the gold from other heavy minerals. After all of the practical metal had been taken out from the ore, the mercury was dispensed down a long copper trough, which formed a thin coating of mercury on the exterior. The waste ore was then transferred down the trough, and any gold in the waste that was amalgamated with the mercury. This coating would sometimes get scraped off and refined to get rid of the mercury, leaving behind somewhat high purity gold. Mercury amalgamation was first useful to silver ores with the development of the patio process in Mexico in 1557. There were also additional amalgamation processes that were created for processing silver ores, including pan amalgamation and the Washoe process. Because of the fact that mercury is expensive and dangerous, amalgamation is not something that is usually done a lot these days. Nonetheless, if there are fine values found it is one of the best ways of getting to it. Another thing is that if you have a few pounds of concentrate that you obtained from a sluicing operation, it is usually hard work and will take a lot of time to pan it all in the small pan. Today, mercury amalgamation has been changed by other methods to recuperate gold and silver from ore. Hazards of mercury toxic waste have played a part in the very close to disappearing of mercury amalgamation processes. However mercury amalgamation is still regularly used by small-scale gold placer miners, in particular in developing countries. If you are considering getting into the prospecting business in a more serious way, you will probably not be content with just scooping up gold flakes as it is a process that takes a lot of time to do and you are probably thinking you could be using your time to get to the real deal. Once you have already mastered beyond the art of gold flakes, which means that you have probably already gotten used to using a sluice or a rocker instead of a pan, you will need to start amalgamating the gold, and then recover it. Something important to know about mercury is that it is dangerous. Most of the places or people that work with mercury are the large scale miners. Only about .01 mg in a human’s body can cause death. Unfortunately after mercury has gotten into the body of a human, it cannot be taken out. There have been some undocumented reports of some serious fines due to the usage of mercury in state and federal recreation areas because it can be very dangerous if it gets lost in the environment. If you do find this, the best thing to do would be to save the concentrates until you have a good amount of them and then give the job to someone who has experience at it.