Ok... I am involved in running a mine which contains a bit of gold but a lot of silver.
Problem with the mine is that the ore contains millions of ounces of silver - but the silver particles are encapsulated in silica.
Due to the silica problem, current known mining techniques are only seeing 5% of the silver in the mine being recovered - with the rest lost during the silver extraction process.
HOW could more silver particles be more easily recovered from the silica???????
An imaginative solution would allow much more profitibility from mining operations - and hence fund the winning prize by itself.
This is serious. If your answer is accepted seriously by the board.. we will seek to contact you in the future (by either email or IM or by seeking you out via an open question directed to you), to either ask for more detail on paper, or, if your answer is accepted and implemented due to it being creatively great, to simply award you your winning payment in 2008.
2007-09-19 07:53:32 · 6 answers · asked by Narky 5 in Science & Mathematics ➔ Other - Science
fifilapoo114 ... 100 million tonnes of silver in the mine at $13 per ounce = over $1 billion US.
2007-09-19 08:04:58 · update #1
Sorry.. not tonnes.. "ounces"... I responded too quickly out of frustration that our question is not being taken seriously.
Indy500... I understand that would also be a good option.. but we would actually pay you as we have never run a cartel.
2007-09-19 08:07:01 · update #2
Ok ok ok... you lot are rightly too cynical rofl.
HOWEVER... it's an honest to god prize... but it's worth $10 million to the winner.
http://www.cbc.ca/money/story/2007/09/19/barrick.html
I would have honestly paid you the £2 million if "we" won. Please remember me if you win (a small finders fee for letting you know would be appreciated).
2007-09-19 08:26:46 · update #3
You make your question sound very suspcious by offering such a large sum of money, but I do have a possible solution that you could look into, and since my motivation on Yahoo answers is purely to help people with their questions, I will outline if for you.
First, you would need to go through whatever normal procedures you go through to remove extraneous material from the ore so that there are not unwanted reactions in subsequent steps. I am not a mining engineer (I'm a geochemist), so I don't know what that would entail. Once you have it to the point where you have mostly silver and its associated silica, grind it down to as small a particle size and you can reasonably afford (using whatever methods are already in place for the ore crushing). Then, place this into a moderately concentrated solution of hydrofluoric acid. The acid will easily dissolve away the silica (this is the same reaction as glass etching), but will leave the silver intact because silver has a positive standard reduction potential. This means that silver is resistant to being dissolved by acid, so the silica will be gone but the silver will be left intact for harvesting and purification. The rate at which you could extract the silver would depend on how small you can grind the ore particles and what concentration of hydrofluoric acid you use.
This plan's main drawback is that you must use hydrofluoric acid, which in concentrated form can be very dangerous. You will need strict safety protocol. However, you can purchase solutions that have already been diluted to minimize the risk, and if there is really as much elemental silver embedded in the silica as you say there is, your increase in profit from all the new silver recovered should be more than enough to pay for the new procedure.
As I said, I am not a mining engineer so I would be ill equipped to come up with working details for this plan. But the idea is logically and scientifically sound, and I'm sure that you can find a chemical engineer or someone with similar qualifications who could help you investigate its feasibility and possibly put the plan into action.
2007-09-19 08:22:58 · answer #1 · answered by mnrlboy 5 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Keep the money ...Use an emulsified Sulfuric acid and ore combination and reverse polarity electroplating you will get gold /silver being deposited on copper bars .....heat the bars to gold /silver melting point and make all the money you need...Wait i need to run now there's Elvis...From the E...
2007-09-19 08:19:51 · answer #2 · answered by Edesigner 6 · 1⤊ 0⤋
E-mail me and tell me more about the silica encapsulation problem.
Doug
2007-09-19 08:07:31 · answer #3 · answered by doug_donaghue 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Ha Ha Ha! Like I am gonna tell YOU. I'll just patent my silica melting idea with deBeers or someone!
2007-09-19 08:00:09 · answer #4 · answered by Anonymous · 2⤊ 1⤋
if you are business person and very well developed and with good brain , i dont think you would ask this type of question on yahoo question...
sorry but i feel you are winding people...
2007-09-19 07:59:05 · answer #5 · answered by funty 4 · 3⤊ 1⤋
you obviously dont know the value of silver.
2007-09-19 08:03:32 · answer #6 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 1⤋
Here is a link to someone that has already figured it out for you: http://www.sigmaaldrich.com/aldrich/brochure/al_reaxa_encap_sup.pdf
Send me a check ;-)
2007-09-19 08:36:01 · answer #7 · answered by Michael B 1 · 1⤊ 0⤋