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Gold/Mining/Energy : International Precious Metals (IPMCF)

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To: Bob Jagow who wrote (23254)	10/26/1997 12:28:00 AM
From: E. Charters	Read Replies (1) of 35569

Well talk to any PhD chemist who will tell you he can detect gold down to 5 PPB, and I ahve talked to a few and he will tell you "first I start with a fusion". Fusion is a fire assay. Instrumental analysis is not as accurate. The most accurate gold assay is the furnace fusion of a slag using an "atomic" collector of inquarted silver. It produces the actual gold with a known loss rate that can be correlated well with many milling methods. The final step is to weight the gold on a beam balance which is electrostatically damped. You cannot beat it for postivity (you collect and see the gold you assay,) accuracy ( the gold you weigh is all the gold you can get) and precision.( the % error by weighing is very low.) By contrast all the "instrumental" methods entail comparisons to standards which attempt to recreate the exact conditions of dissolution and emissivity or absorption of an ionized solution containing the gold for purpose of curve comparison. Error margins compared to the old methods are many times wider and there are frequent and unknown concerns with Ph of solutions and many other chemical complication to cause uncertainty. Not to mention the comparitive speed of aspiration of a solution though a tube and the amount of relative absorption of a flame at different times and the amount of collector solution are all quantitative variables that may alter the accuracy of the assay. All these instrumental assay techniques have going for them is the theoretical lower detection limit to the element in question. They are neither faster nor more accurate, nor cheaper to do. The detection limit is a moot point too, as I have run into instrumental inaccuracies that were very hard to model and were susceptible to reverse curvature from the assumed. The range of accuracy of the machine is very narrow compare to the unlimited range of accuracy of the fusion method. You want trouble, go to a machine with 100 moving parts that a committee designed and an accountant specified. You have trouble with a taking a 100 lb sample and melting it down and collecting a big whacking nugget? If you do then you do not understand the business cause that is what its all about. echarter@vianet.on.ca

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