How is gold extracted from its original point?
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 diss
