At Schemnitz, Kerpenyes, Kreuzberg and other localities in
Hungary, quartz vein stuff containing a little gold, partly free and
partly associated with pyrites and galena, is, after stamping in mills,
similar to those described above, but without rotating stamps,
passed through the so-called “Hungarian gold mill” or “quick-mill.”
This consists of a cast-iron pan having a shallow cylindrical bottom
holding mercury, in which a wooden muller, nearly of the same
shape as the inside of the pan, and armed below with several projecting
blades, is made to revolve by gearing wheels. The stuff
from the stamps is conveyed to the middle of the muller, and is
distributed over the mercury, when the gold subsides, while the
quartz and lighter materials are guided by the blades to the circumference
and are discharged, usually into a second similar mill,
and subsequently pass over blanket tables, i.e. boards covered
with canvas or sacking, the gold and heavier particles becoming entangled
in the fibres. The action of this mill is really more nearly
analogous to that of a centrifugal pump, as no grinding action takes
place in it. The amalgam is cleaned out periodically—fortnightly or
monthly—and after filtering through linen bags to remove the excess
of mercury, it is transferred to retorts for distillation (see below).
Many other forms of pan-amalgamators have been devised. The Laszlo is an improved Hungarian mill, while the Piccard is of the same type. In the Knox and Boss mills, which are also employed for the amalgamation of silver ores, the grinding is effected between flat horizontal surfaces instead of conical or curved surfaces as in the previously described forms.
One of the greatest difficulties in the treatment of gold by amalgamation, and more particularly in the treatment of pyrites, arises from the so-called “sickening” or “flouring” of the mercury; that is, the particles, losing their bright metallic surfaces, are no longer capable of coalescing with or taking up other metals. Of the numerous remedies proposed the most efficacious is perhaps sodium amalgam. It appears that amalgamation is often impeded by the tarnish found on the surface of the gold when it is associated with sulphur, arsenic, bismuth, antimony or tellurium. Henry Wurtz in America (1864) and Sir William Crookes in England (1865) made independently the discovery that, by the addition of a small quantity of sodium to the mercury, the operation is much facilitated. It is also stated that sodium prevents both the “sickening” and the “flouring” of the mercury which is produced by certain associated minerals. The addition of potassium cyanide has been suggested to assist the amalgamation and to prevent “flouring,” but Skey has shown that its use is attended with loss of gold.
Separation of Gold from the Amalgam.—The amalgam is first pressed in wetted canvas or buckskin in order to remove excess of mercury. Lumps of the solid amalgam, about 2 in. in diameter, are introduced into an iron vessel provided with an iron tube that leads into a condenser containing water. The distillation is then effected by heating to dull redness. The amalgam yields about 30 to 40% of gold. Horizontal cylindrical retorts, holding from 200 to 1200 ℔ of amalgam, are used in the larger Californian mills, pot retorts being used in the smaller mills. The bullion left in the retorts is then melted in black-lead crucibles, with the addition of small quantities of suitable fluxes, e.g. nitre, sodium carbonate, &c.
The extraction of gold from auriferous minerals by fusion, except as an incident in their treatment for other metals, is very rarely practised. It was at one time proposed to treat the concentrated black iron obtained in the Ural gold washings, which consists chiefly of magnetite, as an iron ore, by smelting it with charcoal for auriferous pig-iron, the latter metal possessing the property of dissolving gold in considerable quantity. By subsequent treatment with sulphuric acid the gold could be recovered. Experiments on this point were made by Anossow in 1835, but they have never been followed in practice.
Gold in galena or other lead ores is invariably recovered in the refining or treatment of the lead and silver obtained. Pyritic ores containing copper are treated by methods analogous to those of the copper smelter. In Colorado the pyritic ores containing gold and silver in association with copper are smelted in reverberatory furnaces for regulus, which, when desilverized by Ziervogel’s method, leaves a residue containing 20 or 30 oz. of gold per ton. This is smelted with rich gold ores, notably those containing tellurium, for white metal or regulus; and by a following process of partial reduction analogous to that of selecting in copper smelting, “bottoms” of impure copper are obtained in which practically all the gold is concentrated. By continuing the treatment of these in the ordinary way of refining, poling and granulating, all the foreign matters other than gold, copper and silver are removed, and, by exposing the granulated metal to a high oxidizing heat for a considerable time the copper may be completely oxidized while the precious metals are unaltered. Subsequent treatment with sulphuric acid renders the copper soluble in water as sulphate, and the final residue contains only gold and silver, which is parted or refined in the ordinary way. This method of separating gold from copper, by converting the latter into oxide and sulphate, is also used at Oker in the Harz.
Extraction by Means of Aqueous Solutions.—Many processes have been suggested in which the gold of auriferous deposits is converted into products soluble in water, from which solutions the gold may be precipitated. Of these processes, two only are of special importance, viz. the chlorination or Plattner process, in which the metal is converted into the chloride, and the cyanide or MacArthur-Forrest process, in which it is converted into potassium aurocyanide.
(3) Chlorination or Plattner Process.—In this process moistened gold ores are treated with chlorine gas, the resulting gold chloride dissolved out with water, and the gold precipitated with ferrous sulphate, charcoal, sulphuretted hydrogen or otherwise. The process originated in 1848 with C. F. Plattner, who suggested that the residues from certain mines at Reichenstein, in Silesia, should be treated with chlorine after the arsenical products had been extracted by roasting. It must be noticed, however, that Percy independently made the same discovery, and stated his results at the meeting of the British Association (at Swansea) in 1849, but the Report was not published until 1852. The process was introduced in 1858 by Deetken at Grass Valley, California, where the waste minerals, principally pyrites from tailings, had been worked for a considerable time by amalgamation. The process is rarely applied to ores direct; free-milling ores are generally amalgamated, and the tailings and slimes, after concentration, operated upon. Three stages in the process are to be distinguished: (i) calcination, to convert all the metals, except gold and silver, into oxides, which are unacted upon by chlorine; (ii.) chlorinating the gold and lixiviating the product; (iii.) precipitating the gold.
The calcination, or roasting, is conducted at a low temperature in some form of reverberatory furnace. Salt is added in the roasting to convert any lime, magnesia or lead which may be present, into the corresponding chlorides. The auric chloride is, however, decomposed at the elevated temperature into finely divided metallic gold, which is then readily attacked by the chlorine gas. The high volatility of gold in the presence of certain metals must also be considered. According to Egleston the loss may be from 40 to 90% of the total gold present in cupriferous ores according to the temperature and duration of calcination. The roasted mineral, slightly moistened, is introduced into a vat made of stoneware or pitched planks, and furnished with a double bottom. Chlorine, generally prepared by the interaction of pyrolusite, salt and sulphuric acid, is led from a suitable generator beneath the false bottom, and rises through the moistened ore, which rests on a bed of broken quartz; the gold is thus converted into a soluble chloride, which is afterwards removed by washing with water. Both fixed and rotating vats are employed, the chlorination proceeding more rapidly in the latter case; rotating barrels are sometimes used. There have also been introduced processes in which the chlorine is generated in the chloridizing vat, the reagents used being dilute solutions of bleaching powder and an acid. Munktell’s process is of this type. In the Thies process, used in many districts in the United States, the vats are rotating barrels made, in the later forms, of iron lined with lead, and provided with a filter formed of a finely perforated leaden grating running from one end of the barrel to the other, and rigidly held in place by wooden frames. Chlorine is generated within the barrel from sulphuric acid and chloride of lime. After charging, the barrel is rotated, and when the chlorination is complete the contents are emptied on a filter of quartz or some similar material, and the filtrate led to settling tanks.
After settling the solution is run into the precipitating tanks. The precipitants in use are: ferrous sulphate, charcoal and sulphuretted hydrogen, either alone or mixed with sulphur dioxide; the use of copper and iron sulphides has been suggested, but apparently these substances have achieved no success.
In the case of ferrous sulphate, prepared by dissolving iron in dilute sulphuric acid, the reaction follows the equation AuCl3 + 3FeSO4 = FeCl3 + Fe2(SO4)3 + Au. At the same time any lead, calcium, barium and strontium present are precipitated as sulphates; it is therefore advantageous to remove these metals by the preliminary addition of sulphuric acid, which also serves to keep any basic iron salts in solution. The precipitation is carried out in tanks or vats made with wooden sides and a cement bottom. The solutions are well mixed by stirring with wooden poles, and the gold allowed to settle, the time allowed varying from 12 to 72 hours. The supernatant liquid is led into settling tanks, where a further amount of gold is deposited, and is then filtered through sawdust or sand, the sawdust being afterwards burnt and the gold separated from the ashes and the sand treated in the chloridizing vat. The precipitated gold is washed, treated with salt and sulphuric acid to remove iron salts, roughly dried by pressing in cloths or on filter paper, and then melted with salt, borax and nitre in graphite crucibles. Thus prepared it has a fineness of 800-960, the chief impurities usually being iron and lead.
Charcoal is used as the precipitant at Mount Morgan, Australia. Its use was proposed as early as 1818 and 1819 by Hare and Henry; Percy advocated it in 1869, and Davis adopted it on the large scale at a works in Carolina in 1880. The action is not properly understood; it may be due to the reducing gases (hydrogen, hydrocarbons, &c.) which are invariably present in wood charcoal. The process consists essentially in running the solution over layers of charcoal, the charcoal being afterwards burned. It has been found that the reaction proceeds faster when the solution is heated.
