Lesson 36 Help With High Grade Arsenopyrite Ore
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- Опубліковано 19 жов 2024
- I met a gentleman in Oregon with a high grade arsenopyrite ore to see if I could give him some useful information. While I thought I had some good ideas for him and his partner, I did,'t have any answers. perhaps one of you does...
Keith, if the ore sample was truly a representative sample and they feel the deposit is adequately large, then I'm excited for them. I suggest they contact Metals Research Corp. in Kimberly, Idaho, and ask for the Project Engineer. He's quite experienced processing such ores and very bright at problem solving. I spoke with him (Josh Markell) last month concerning a similar issue and was very impressed.
This is so funny as I was about 130 miles from you that day starting a 19 day solo gold mining trip
Glad to see you up and about finally!
Thank you. Feeling pretty good and Dr says they got it all.
Keith
look up citric acid treatment of arsenic. I've tested my oregon arsenopyrite with chlorine and then citric acid baths then a simple roast. I test planned before the roast and after and without the treatment baths. I can see gold with my magnifying glass really fine gold but only after i roast does it all show like crazy.
Thank you very much. I'll check it out.
Keith
can you elaborate more? i had difficult time understandin your words but i knew bigger picture but dont really sure what's to perform roast or citric first, then what about chlorine?
It sounds as though this ore is not suited to a small boutique operation as the mineralised rock (remember it is not called ore until it is profitable to extract!) may need pressure oxidation before the gold can be leached. I would recommend you send a sample to the nearest university that has a scanning electron microscope. You can use EDS (energy-dispersive X-Ray spectroscopy) function to scan the sample down to below a single micron. This will tell you what minerals the gold is encapsulated within. It will probably cost about $500-$1000 but you will know straight away if all the gold is locked up in arsenopyrite and if you should continue to put your money and time into a prospect with gold you can not recover without substantial investment.
Thank you very much for the info. Another possibility is to simply mine it and deliver it to a custom processor. Apparently they have had several offers, but were hoping to be able to increase their profit. It is looking more and more like that may be the only profitable option on a small scale.
Keith
Yes I imagine selling it in its unprocessed form may be the most realistic option. Would love to see the deposit and type of rock they are mining as the grades are phenomenal.
Didn't have time to go to the mine, but- yep, that's some serious grade! At least I got them some information for their decision making. Someday I'll try to get a look.
Period Six Mining And Exploration LLC deals with a lot of arsenopyrites in the Wickenburg area and should have some knowledge and advice of dealing with it safely. I've seen you commenting on their videos before.
It's not easy stuff to play with, but bio-oxidation is the only way for us to go with arsenopyrite. Even then we don't have a good handle on the back-end disposal costs even as we lock up the arsenic in the current preferred by the EPA arsenic compounds for remediation of arsenic contaminated sites.
The older timers in Australia used eucalyptus oil to leach their ore, would like to learn more about that.
Hmmm....Me too. I think I'll ask Stuart who lives there. Thanks.
Keith
A total lack of any free gold also makes me wonder about the accuracy of the samples -
I would use multiple samples sent to a few labs before I felt real confident without any visible gold.
Many people do not understand the purposes of sampling. This guy might have followed all the right steps - I dont know. However on the other hand I've seen plenty of samples taken totally as high grade and then thought of later as if they were the average of the whole deposit. Because of the expense, most do not take enough samples anyway. If you are only interested in the free gold, you can create your own bulk samples and see what you get.
Another issue is limited access due to altitude and snow.
Mike Adams's Advances in Gold Ore Processing 2005 p 319, and the journal HYDROMETALLURGY 153 (2015) pp 106-113 mention trying to get the auriferous arsenopyrite conscntrated at the flotation stage. One mentions pretrestment with sodium hydroxide, the other "selective depressing" with potassium permanganate while maintaining a narrow ORPmeter range -40 to 500mV (Wong, 2004), if I read them right. For what it's worth. Another article that suggested converting sulfides to oxides before smelting, mentioned -625 mesh being a threshold number, which one hopes would apply to conventional gravity.
there's a typo there, -400 500mV was what the original said...
Thank you very much for the help. The real sticking point seems to be what to do with the concentrates once you have them. Roasting arsenic in the US seems to be rather frowned upon. I'm thinking it may be best just to concentrate and sell the cons.
Your opinion?
Keith
Btw, thank you for your very interesting and informative videos. It may be worth mentioning that, in several ways, As is not difficult to remove, which lay-prospectors may not realize. I lean towards"...make no mention of the names of other gods..." (Ex 23:13), though it may not seem to come out that way.
Perhaps it is my medication, but I am confused about this post. :-)
I must be missing some key point.
keith
As, arsenic, a pathfinder/halo/indicator in many desirable ores, does not quite alloy with gold as tellurium may, as the papers at 911metallurgist seem to confirm. There may be semantics, eutectics, etc. An implied argument goes -- because the only way to get it out of gravity cons is heat, amalgam, high-tech or chemistry, I am going to try amalgam, because all roads to lead to amalgam. No leach by-products, no smoke, no finessing every tablespoon,...
Since I do not yet use mercury, I am guessing either there is a spiffy As-Hg removal trick that ought to be mentioned here by someone else (since I read As enters mercury), or maybe one sells the mercury when it's useless with all its gunk?
As a phosphorous-like compound, arsenic should be very easy to test for, using ~egg albumen test strips (does anything exist that should exist these days?) and such, but although it does not glow in the dark, its magnetism, "rock identification" info, excluding look-alikes, response to static/electricity, 5% lye test, froth float, matrix rock, attacking iron/Cu, smell and how it lays in the pan -- keep it avoidable.
"As is easy to remove" -- Big Gold processing As-Au ores is less than copper mining or volcanoes (25%), according to www.miningfacts.org: "Air pollution can be controlled effectively using scrubbers, electrostatic precipitators, and baghouses in smelters, which are capable of removing up to 99.7% of the dust and fumes produced during roasting and smelting. [13] Mine tailings and wastewater can be treated with iron compounds, which react with the arsenic and remove it from the water. [14] Arsenic can also be filtered from waste and tailings with iron oxides, clay liners, and activated charcoal filters, which can be disposed of safely. [14]"
The Micro Scale Redux of Big Gold precautions: If we know what the mineral species looks like, we may return much that is not in weird admixture to where we found it, or somewhere where it may prove at a less than "hazardous" concentration (1 ppm = ~ 0.034 ounce/ton, so if 10 ppm were RCRA acceptable, hide an ounce in 3 tons?), before it oxidizes/reacts into something else? [If you can match the oxidation states and match the compound, I would rather pay some Mom-and-Pop As-geology service rather than pull my hair out?] The alternative, if we do not uncover a way to sell sulfide cons over ebay may be to mail reduced trace arsenic 1 pound at a time via UPS, quintuple-wrapped, to a Hazardous Waste facility?
Pressure oxidation with an autoclave. Google it. Should be affordable with Rich ore like that.
If you can afford to capital expenditure. 911 metallurgy seems to be pretty informed on the subject.
p.s. I myself have been researching lately about floatation methods you might say dabbling ,maybe unwisely ha ha ,but from what I have sussed out is that the best chemical or chemicals for floating pyrite ores is a thing called sodium ethyl xanthate ,which seems to be the most popular one for pyrite ores ,and I believe you can manufacture it ,that's if you cant buy it ,by combining ethynol ,CnH2n+ioh with sodium hydroxide ,or caustic soda NaoH and carbon disulphide Cs2 , which I believe can be made using hydrocarbon and sulphur , then froth with pine oil or eucalyptus oil or diesel , I haven't done it yet but I would say proceed with caution ,certainly experimenting with chemical extraction could always be dangerous and that is why you should consult probably a mining chemist ,but anyway if that was of any help or maybe just dribble you can decide, cheers.
I live in Tucson with two world class copper mines within 30 minutes. I'm sure that xanthanates are easy to get here, just haven't tried yet.
@@hardrockuniversity7283 I'm in Tucson also. It seems all the parks and schools have their walkways decorated with orange quartz they got no idea it's all gold!?
@@StevenHanover Iron stained quartz is no guarantee of gold. Good indication, not even more likely than not though.
Maybe we could get together sometime?
@@hardrockuniversity7283 I got a whites tdi detector and shop vacs that can run off the truck. Just not sure where to start looking. Damn coyotes will get me if I start digging the washes. A gentleman told me lots of gold in Aravacha Arizona. The iron eats gold and needs to be extracted in the lab or roasted I'm learning. Would be cool to meet up I'm near E. Water St.
@@StevenHanover Just north of the U of A?
YeeeeeHaaaaaaa
arsenic is obviously a heavy metal , residual ,not real nice stuff ,but I knew an old banana grower once who I did some building work for ,and he used it a lot handled it probably like most old farmers ,carelessly , told me he had some blood tests done when he was younger ,and the results were that they said he had enough arsenic in him to kill ten men ,haha ,true story , but anyway I;m sure it would be bad to burn it in anyway , I suppose if you were to crush and float it with chemicals, you would need to certainly use caution ,definitely something to have a talk with a mining chemist about ,good luck, ohh I have no doubt the samples could have invisible gold , also when you said about white gold ,I thought that was palladium or platinum group metals ,maybe that's what you meant ,anyway cheers.
I'm sure he developed a resistance to the arsenic over the years. Probably not something to try at home :-)
Electrum is actually an alloy of gold and silver. Depending on the amount of silver, it can be anything from yellow to white. Most natural gold is actually electrum with a high gold percentage (around 90%). When it gets to 50/50 gold to silver it looks like silver.
Well mr keiths .. im puttin miss blackfoot prospectings onto you ..shes gotta clay problems .. i told her you are the bloke (ol geeza😁) to talk to .. i hope you kinn help her out .. we thinks shes kinda specials ..pip pips and carryon
I'll do my best.
@@hardrockuniversity7283 thanks mr keiths ..😁
smelt the cons with collector metal, cupel out the base metals. see mbmm videos
I'll check them out.
Did he have it analyzed for heavy metals content? If the arsenic levels are low enough he probably doesn't need to worry
7.5% As
Arsenopyrite is nasty stuff
I've never dealt with it personally, but that does seem to be the consensus.
roast it first
That becomes complicated with arsenic, especially in the USA with regulations and all. That seems even more difficult to get around than the physical issues.
Where are you if I may ask?
Keith
@@hardrockuniversity7283 get a fan with carbon filters like computer board desoldering fan absorbs the fumes. I'm just guessing!