How is gold extracted from its original point?

Answer 1

Gold is a relatively inert material and therefore is often found as the pure element...as free gold in nugget form. Smaller flecks of gold are also often found in river beds or around some water sources near gold deposits and this is where panning for gold originates from.

Most gold these days is not free gold but in fact very minute quantities bound up in the mineral matrix of an orebody.

This is where chemical and physical separation techniques come into play.

Generally the ore is first ground to a small particle size using a sag mill and water to create a slurry.

The slurry effectively separates particulates by density leaving only the gold bearing material. The rest is washed away and sent to a tailings pond.

The gold bearing material can be refined by various methods.

There are several biological agents (bacteria) that digest gold leaving other material as waste. The gold can then be later recovered.

By far the most common is to use a cyanide leach. Gold will easily react and dissolve into a cyanide solution. This can then be passed through a solvent extraction circuit to remove the gold from the cyanide allowing re-use of the cyanide. The gold in the organic solvent is then contacted with an aqueous solution of required pH to pass the gold back into aqueous solution.

This can then be deposited onto carbon rods by electrolysis and the carbon removed by the application of vigorous heat (burning) leaving pure molten gold.

Fire Assay is another technique often used on a smaller scale which involves the adsorption of gold into a base metal (usually lead) leaving a glass silicate ore waste which can be physically chipped away. Cupellation removes the lead through volatilisation leaving a prill. The prill can be further refined by washing in nitric acid to digest other precious metals leaving pure solid gold.


Hope this is of some help.
Cheers :)

Answer 2

Hi, drilling of holes into the earth at the seleted spots in order to locate the gold reef precisely.there holes may be no more then centimetres in diameter and extend to depths of many thousands of metres.Then are excarated by drilling at various angles into the face of the tunnel there are then filled with explosives and the rock is blasted out.The barren rock is sent to waste dumps and gold bearing ore is sent to reduction works for processing and the recovery of the gold

Answer 3

It is mined out of gold bearing veins or panned from streams. If necessary it is smelted and purified.