TITLE:
Mercury-Free Gold Extraction Using Borax for Small-Scale Gold Miners
AUTHORS:
Peter Wiltje Uitterdijk Appel, Leoncio Degay Na-Oy
KEYWORDS:
Small-Scale Mining, Amalgamation, Borax, Gold, Pollution, Mercury Flour
JOURNAL NAME:
Journal of Environmental Protection,
Vol.5 No.6,
May
12,
2014
ABSTRACT: Small-scale gold mining is the largest anthropogenic contributor of mercury
pollution on planet Earth. The miners grind gold ore together with mercury in
order to recover the fine gold grains. The gold amalgam is burned whereby the
mercury evaporates and gold is left behind. This processing extracts only a
fraction of the gold in the ore and the released mercury causes serious global
health and environmental problems. However, a mercury-free method described
below has proved to extract up to twice as much gold without need of investment
in new processing equipment and without longer processing time. The method has
successfully been tested in the Philippines, Indonesia, Tanzania, Bolivia and
Zimbabwe.