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Gold/Mining/Energy : Maxam Gold Corp. OBB:MXAM
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To: Mellofellow who wrote (5337)8/18/1998 8:22:00 AM
From: Richard Mazzarella   of 11603
 
Mello, thanks for your post. Your experience has been reported to these dirt threads before as typical for more conventional ores. However, experiments with the desert sands shows that recovery always exceeds assay. Some like Joe Champion suggest that the ore is being transmuted atomically, the transmutation coming from mechanical and/or chemical energy for very small samples that can't be scaled up. I reject that hypothesis and believe a simpler model. I understand that much of the precious metals are finely divided in the refractory ore lattice, maybe even in solution. GPGI desert sand ore is so highly bound that GPGI has to smelt the ore at very high temperature to have the precious metals diffuse into copper as collector. Normal SFAs fluxing and collecting with lead or silver occur at too low a temperature for metal bead collection. Maxam ore is a little simpler than GPGI's in that there is more of a placer component and grinding experiment results I have seen show increased assay with increased milling, maximizing with wet mechanical grinding and ultrasonic commutation.

I agree with you that batch leaching may be higher cost than simple heap leaching, but that higher cost would be offset by simple screening concentration and recovery of other "mined elements". I also anxiously await recovery testing cost determination. I'm not sure Maxam's method will even be batch, Hewlett has patented a continuous method to process. I can post the patent reference if you would like.

Again thanks for your post, I appreciate your experience and always look forward to learn. Notice that when posts are civil, so can be replies.
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