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Lode Gold for the Prospector by Kyle Williams
The lode needs to be evaluated for the total resources, usually through a sequential process involving drilling and bulk sampling. There are many methods of recovering gold and each deposit has to be tested to find the most suitable process flow sheet. However I get a feeling that you are not really looking for that! are you?
In small scale gold mining the usual process is as follows:
1. Crush and pulverize the ore
2. Sometimes roasting helps for highly sulphidic ores.
3. Pan the ore and preserve the concentrate.
4. Pick gold grains from panned concentrate. Here comes the dangerous and environmentally wrong part
5. Mix the concentrate thoroughly in mercury to create a gold-mercury amalgam and then burn it to evaporate the Mercury and recover gold. This is an environmentally hazardous process and causes downstream mercury poisoning.
6. The other very efficient process involves dissolving the concentrate in one of the most poisonous chemicals - cyanide - better left undescribed.