Pt askmaster, your question took me a while to answer. That was quite a post. I wanted to read it twice before jumping off the cliff.
David Hudson's work has been known to me for some time as well as a couple of his patents. I do not know David Hudson himself. He is a man of wisdom and his observations are very good, although I do not agree with some of his opinions, because in those regards I have opinions of my own. But, I can understand from where he draws his opinions and therefore, respect them. It is interesting how he evolved into his research. I think all of the people working in this field have a knowledge evolution story to tell. I admire the fact that he tells the story and gives the opinion of others as well as his own. It is a shame that some companies working in the field of cluster and micro colloid chemistry/physics refuse to admit that they are working in a field of chemistry that varies from what has been the conventional thinking until recent years. By this denial, they leave the doors open via the more recent research to demonstrate their ignorance and infact lay the ground work as exposure to fraudulent perceptions. There are good people out there doing the research and making an honest effort to tell of their findings. They are at universities, basement labs and in most countries every where. I have had the exposure and good fortune to work with information and scientists that helped me form my opinions. Apparently, David used them also. He didn't try to call a camel a horse and enter it in a horse race. Good for him.
While I am at it let me say that microclusters are the smallest of the colloids. They come in mono, by and multiple polarities. They can have multiple valences as well as single valences. They can occur as compounds and ions at the same time. They can have one or more ligand bonds, positive and negative valences at the same time. They can be mono-elemental and they can be alloys. They appear as physical stable atomic configurations and have no association to other reactive agents, nor will they collect unto their own kind.
Hudson's work in his patents that I have looked at were designed to collect certain groups of clusters as clusters. In the mining industry the target is much more simple, although maybe not that simple. Here all we want to do is collect the valuable elements in any cluster form or otherwise. The next trick is to convert the clusters to their marketable forms. Makes no difference what the target, platinum, gold, silver or lead. Collect, concentrate and convert. That is the mining companies game. Hudson is tackling a much more difficult target, I believe.
But here is where the simple target become more difficult. The mineral process industry has to accept that there are virtually an infinite number of cluster and charged colloid combinations. Platinum and gold therefore only represent a portion of infinity. We may not in our lifetime be able to collect all of the cluster forms. My goodness, as far as I am aware, I am the only person that has a crude method of classification for these PGM and gold cluster resources. The classifications are:
1. Rocks where free gold can be seen with the naked eye and will not assay accurately. The reason, in my opinion is caused by cluster interferences. For instance, if the samples are subjected to amalgamation recoveries, they will produce far more gold than by fire assay. The Oro Grande and Lost Basin Arizona. At both the gold can be collected by physical means, but will not accurately report to the excess litharge assay. Platinum can be visually seen at the Oro Grande as well as the gold. Platinum is present at Lost Basin but there I have seen only free gold in the rocks.
2. Gold in microscopic visible particles. In these the same is true as in number one, except to see the gold a hand lense or microscope is required to see the larger particles of values. Arkansas, Texas, Virginia, Alaska, Fort MacKay area of Alberta, Athabaska region of Saskatchewan, shale deposits in Colorado, Utah and elsewhere.
3. Gold and PGMs in cluster form where the values cannot be seen by either unaided visual inspection or by microscope. Some of these deposits are older deposits that have been remineralized by hydrothermal mineralization. The Rudnik in Yugoslavia, the Oro Grande, the Climax Molybdenum mine and others fit this category. Some of these deposits are ore deposits for the non precious metals.
4. The micro-colloid deposits. These are deposits that may be concentrated by certain means. They are usually associated with the more difficult true microcluster deposits.
5. The true microcluster deposit. It goes from difficult to much more difficult in the relative scheme of things. Here the individuat species are easy to move around, collect into certain mediums like oil saturated woody products, possible flotation processes and by some conventional methods like cyanidation. But what do you have after you collect them? I am not at liberty to identify these locations.
6. The non-valence, mono-polar inert micro-species that will resist almost anything modern science throws at it. It is these guys that every once in a while show up like the "Cheshire Cat". We may not live to see this guy tamed. These are found in certain low sulfur volcanic steam events, as brine deposits and the like. They also can be collected into some organics and in sea bed deposits as well as shell fish shells along major crustal breaks. ( Hunter, Parker)
Please note that all of the natural resources above may have some or all of the characteristics of the classifications that fall into a category below it.
What does classification bring up. Well first it just a matter of opinion; but the ease of developing process technology depends on classifification followed by picking on the easy ones first. As Wiley Cyote would say, lets go get the birds nests on the ground first. I think that in the order of things you can see the first targets on the list are my preferences as first ideal targets for exploitation.
"The continuous reduction in size of a solid finally leads to a situation where the origional solid state properties can only be partially observed or may be even completely lost, as these properties are exclusively the result of the cooperation between an infinite number of building blocks." Gunter Schmid
Some day I would like to meet David Hudson, purely for argumentative purposes and to share ideas. mike
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