Hobbies And Interests
Things You'll Need
Instructions
Remove the gold ore (gold found within rocks) from the mining site. Large deposits are rare, and gold is usually found in small amounts in its elemental state among the rocks.
Sort the gold ore according to size with the grizzly and conveyor belt. Wash the ore during this stage of sorting to allow the shaker machine to remove any bits of rock and ore less than 1/2 inch diameter into a fine ore bin or box beneath. The larger bits will be crushed in the crusher before joining the fine ore pieces.
Place the fine ore on the conveyor belt to a ball mill, a rotating steel cylinder full of tumbling steel balls, to further pulverize the ore and separate gold from rock. The result is a substance the consistency of sand or powder.
Choose the method for extracting the gold: amalgamation or vat leaching. Amalgamation requires mercury; use it on the ore to dissolve the gold, and then boil it off and distill the gold. This method is very expensive. Vat leaching is more common. Put the ball mill powder in a thickener with a sodium cyanide and water mixture to create a sludge.
Direct the sludge into holding tanks. Remove the sludge from the holding tanks using clarifier to remove the remaining rock substances from the ore.(ref. 1) Further clarify the solution by sending it through a deaerator tank.