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Gold/Mining/Energy : A New Age In Gold Refining -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lee Bush who wrote (331)	12/17/1997 8:19:00 PM
From: Michael J. Wendell	Respond to of 672

Hi Lee, Let me try and answer soome of your questions. 1 If the Hewlett system is a radical approach, does it warrant investigation as a possible alternative to your electrowinning process? First of all, processes I advocate are not electrowinning processes as would be conventionally perceived.They sometimes do use electricity. Have you investigated Richard Hewlett's design (MAXAM) to extract metals? I do not know the Hewlett system. Nor do I know the chlorine /boron method. There are a number of methods that can be made to effectively work. It is not the leach and in most cases not the collection of the metals that make these processes work or cost effective. It is the kind of molecular species of precious metals that are recovered and the processing of the recovered metals afterwards. It is the final refining process that makes a difference. After collecting precious metals onto resin, what is next? How repeatable is it and does it report 100% of the recovered metals to the sale. If the results vary widely, I would say they have work ahead of them. Look at inconsistency as the red flag of warning that points to disaster later on when the big bucks are on the line. If batch 1 produces X and each successive batch of ore yields the same, good for them. They are heading into home base. Cluster deposits are amazing as to the distribution of values being so consistent. We all want to be optimistic. Experience hits us in the face over and over again. When we learn to pay attention to the little inconsistencies rather than the pile of test data that looks good, we can proceed with process evaluation. I have found that every little adverse quirk is a major stumbling hurdle when commercial scale up is attempted.Get it right now, not later. If Maxam is following those rules, looking for trouble more than they look for success, they are doing it right. Bad results or process result deviations are sometimes the most time and money savings data available. Of course, that is my opinion based on no knowledge of their process. mike