Getting Gold: A Gold-Mining Handbook for Practical MenJohnson, J. C. F. (Joseph Colin Francis)
History
Getting Gold: A Gold-Mining Handbook for Practical Men
Johnson, J. C. F. (Joseph Colin Francis)
Gold mines and mining
The earlier practical applications of chlorine to gold extraction were
known as Mears’ and Plattner’s processes, and consisted in placing the
material to be operated on in vats with water, and introducing chlorine
gas at the bottom, the mixture being allowed to stand for a number of
hours, the minimum about twelve, the maximum forty-eight. The
chlorinated water was then drawn off containing the gold in solution
which was deposited as a brown powder by the addition of sulphate of
iron.
Great improvements on this slow and imperfect method have been made of
late years, among the earlier of which was that of Messrs. Newbery and
Vautin. They placed the pulp with water in a gas-tight revolving
cylinder, into which the chlorine was introduced, and atmospheric air to
a pressure of 60 lb. to the square inch was pumped in. The cylinder with
its contents was revolved for two hours, then the charge was withdrawn
and drained nearly dry by suction, the resultant liquid being slowly
filtered through broken charcoal on which the chloride crystals were
deposited, in appearance much like the bromo-chlorides of silver ore
seen on some of the black manganic oxides of the Barrier silver mines.
The charcoal, with its adhering chlorides, was conveyed to the
smelting-house and the gold smelted into bars of extremely pure metal.
Messrs. Newbery and Vautin claimed for their process decreased time for
the operation with increased efficiency.
At Mount Morgan, when I visited that mine in the eighties, they were
using what might be termed a composite adaptation process. Their
chlorination works, the largest in the world, were putting through 1500
tons per week. The ore as it came from the mine was fed automatically
into Krumm roller mills, and after being crushed and sifted to
regulation gauge was delivered into trucks and conveyed to the roasting
furnaces, and thence to cooling floors, from which it was conveyed to
the chlorinating shed. Here were long rows of revolving barrels, on the
Newbery-Vautin principle, but with this marked difference, that the
pressure in the barrel was obtained from an excess of the gas itself,
generated from a charge of chloride of lime and sulphuric acid. On
leaving the barrels the pulp ran into settling vats, somewhat on the
Plattner plan, and the clear liquid having been drained off was passed
through a charcoal filter, as adopted by Newbery and Vautin. The
manager, Mr. Wesley Hall, stated that the estimated cost per ton was not
more than 30_s._, and he expected shortly to reduce that when he began
making his own sulphuric acid. As he was obtaining over 4 oz. to the ton
the process was paying very well, but it will be seen that the price
would be prohibitive for poor ores unless they could be concentrated
before calcination.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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