Modern Gold Mining Methods
Humans have mined gold for millennia. Modern miners have several methods at their disposal for obtaining this precious yellow metal, including cyanidation, sluice boxes, dredges, metal detectors and hard rock (underground) mining.
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Cyanidation
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Miners sometimes extract gold from ore by cyanidation. Cyanide is applied to ore, where it reacts with gold to form gold cyanide, separating the gold from the ore.
Sluice Boxes
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A sluice box extracts gold from streams or rivers. Topless and open-ended, it channels water and gravel over slats called riffles, causing gold particles in the water and gravel to settle on the box's bottom.
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Dredges
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A more advanced tool for extracting gold from streams or rivers is a dredge, an apparatus that pumps water and gravel through a sluice tray. Dredges vary in size. Some operate submerged, while others are operated on the water's surface.
Metal Detectors
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Metal detectors can detect miniscule nuggets that lie within inches of the ground's surface and large nuggets as deep as a meter. However, they are not useful for detecting gold dust or flakes.
Hard Rock Mining
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To reach underground gold deposits, miners dig a ramp or a shaft alongside the ore and create horizontal tunnels that branch off the ramp or shaft at various levels. Blasting and machinery are then used to extract the ore.
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- Photo Credit Gold image by Sergii Mogyla from Fotolia.com
