How Is Gold Mined?

By Author: Bob Ethan
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How is Gold Mined? It's Not a Simple Task

The definition of gold mining is the extraction of gold from the Earth, done through diverse systems. There are three primary types of gold extraction : placer mining / sediment mining, hard rock mining, and byproduct gold mining.

Placer mining / sediment mining is the removal of gold from the ground with little or no digging. Most other metals are not mined with placer mining systems, but since gold is worth so much even in tiny quantities, placer mining has been used to get it, especially in the California gold rush. It is still used to a limited extent these days.

How is gold mined? One procedure is through gold panning.The most important technique of placer mining is gold panning. A pan is stuffed with soil and tiny rocks that may include small pieces of gold. You add a bit of liquid to the pan and rattle it, and since gold is a particularly dense metal it quickly settles at the bottom of the pan. People do this at placer deposits, stream beds where gold settles. Gold panning could have been viable for the individual miner at the time of the gold ...
... rush, but isn't viable for giant gold deposits except for if it's done in a place where labor costs are very low.

A help to gold panning is the employment of a metal detector, that the miner can utilize to find gold under the surface.

Another placer mining system is sluicing. A sluice box is a box placed in the water stream that collects gold particles as water washes through it.

The next important type of gold mining is hard rock mining. This is what we most typically think about as "mining", with pits or tunnels dug into the ground to extract gold ore from the hard rock. The biggest quantity of new gold supplies come from hard rock mining.

Then there is byproduct gold mining. This suggests that the main metal that is extracted is not gold, but that some gold is extracted with the most important metal. For example, copper mining frequently results in the removal of some gold. ( It should be noted that silver is principally a side-effect of copper production as well ).

As soon as the miners have extracted the gold ore, how can they take out the gold from the ore? The most typical strategy is gold cyanidation. The ore with gold inside is finely ground, and next sodium cyanide solution is added to it. The gold and cyanide together make a solution that may be removed from the rock. Then zinc is added to that extracted solution, which removes the gold from the cyanide. After that the zinc is extracted from the gold using sulfuric acid, producing a gold sludge that is then prepared to be smelted and refined.

So how is gold mined? It's quite a long procedure simply to produce gold. It is exactly due to gold's undying status and status as true cash and preserver of wealth that we are going to such lengths to get the dear orange mineral.
Gold is a fascinating metal, but there are many unanswered questions and misconceptions surrounding the yellow mineral. Find out the answer to "How is Gold Mined?" and other questions at The Gold Market.