Static Electricity & Gold

[G0lddigg@]

That floating gold i believe is more to do with surface tention mate. Certainly makes things all that more difficult when the gold is contaminated as you say

 

[Bjay]

Being serious, its a great idea, but the force of moving material would most likely overpower any static hold , i often wonder when swirling a pan if there is more than gravity holding the gold in place as once it does move it travels freely for a bit , maybe its just gliding on the water between it and the pan or is it the water tension over the top that helps hold it in place ?
Being silly we could test the static theory by dragging a cat backwards through your paydirt

I don't know much about static electricity but I'm sure the dragging the cat theory would help in the agitation of your pay dirt and aid in the settling trough gravity

 

[aussiefarmer]

patting a cat backwards is the strongest source of static I have found , just pre warm your ***** in the sun for an hour and hey presto it crackles and sparks .
as for the agitation use the kitty right side up and if its house trained it should do it automatically just be sure to feed it rinse aid so its deposits don't clag up the paydirt.

 

[dwt]

patting a cat backwards is the strongest source of static I have found , just pre warm your ***** in the sun for an hour and hey presto it crackles and sparks .
as for the agitation use the kitty right side up and if its house trained it should do it automatically just be sure to feed it rinse aid so its deposits don't clag up the paydirt.

thought that was going somewhere else for a second :lol:

 

[Bjay]

Probly can't really say here but growing up on a farm sometimes the kitty's go off like a shaker table . Probably not for long enough though.

 

[aussiefarmer]

Has anyone tried to float gold out with hard water and maybe oil ??

 

[AtomRat]

I havnt tried it yet ( floatation method )

 

[G0lddigg@]

 

[aussiefarmer]

I havnt tried it yet ( floatation method )

I dont know if its a method more of a thought as it only takes a sweaty finger to make it float and i havent noticed the black sand behave that way , i guess its the same as all methods and only a percentage would behave thet way.

How does mercury work ? Does it make all the gold stick together or something ? I am to lazy to google it.

 

[G0lddigg@]

i think thats due to gold being so darn flat sometimes its surface area is able to support itself quite well, there are some black sands that do that but again its contaminated water, near mines sites, town drain inlets etc.

Mercury works by grabbing the little bits and holding onto them like a long lost brother... basically absorbing them into the blob "my technical term" you need to agitate the sand and mercury for a good bond to happen, in fact if the gold is too contaminated it wont stick sometimes.

 

[AtomRat]

That's why you clean it with some HCl acid first if you can

 

[Boss man out]

Our band teacher in Placerville Ca. Invented a static electricity dry washer, he had this patent for years.
It recovered fine gold perfect.
Keene must now have the patent or just copying it.
All you do is blow dry air threw wool cloth and that stick's the gold to the wool cloth and blows everything else away.

Take a broom stick and rap it with wool, then put a piece of plastic pipe over both.
Now with a wool brush rub the plastic pipe on your stick to make static electricity put some gold on the ground and rub the stick over it, then look at you stick, it will have the gold on it.
Boss man out.

 

[Mike678]

You can recover gold by flotation . I have seen it done in the lab . I think it works with alluvial gold but not others .

I can ask my old boss , he is a metallurgist , if any body is interested .

 

[user 4485]

The flotation process is used in gold recovery from ore slurry/concentrate with the use of chemicals.
Haven't heard of flotation for alluvial gold? Alluvial methods all seem to be about gravity processing/separation of one sort or another.
Interested to hear about it though if something exists.

 

[grubstake]

Those chemicals are usually xanthates, generically referred to as 'frothers':
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Froth_flotation

 

[sam-u-al]

Static electricity is a build up of electrons on the surface of an object that doesnt have a good path to earth. Generally works better on non conductive materials like plastics. I recently did some work on a machine in a plastic film factory that had a couple of big discharge wands that the operators used to remove the charge from the film before touching the polypropolene film coming off the rollers. It must have been one hell of a charge as these wands were fairly heavy duty.

Remember zapping your mates at school by rubbing your feet on the crappy synthetic carpet and charging yourself up then touching you targets arm with a biro.

I dont know what the naturally charged state of a gold partical is but your collector would need to be oppositely charged as opposites attract.

Ha! Years ago I worked as a Statistician for a year in an office building and one particular gorgeous young woman used to inadvertently zap people a lot, and it became an embarrassing situation for her... and even more embarrassing when it was discovered it was her nylon nickers in combination with the shoes she wore and the nylon carpets that was the cause... the poor thing was made a joke of for months... and in the end a directive from the boss had to enter the conversation and say STOP IT... and these days the Courts would AWARD HER a tiny sum for harassment...