mercury

Chemical Precipitation on Mercury

The Chemical Precipitation on Mercury of the Gilmour – Young Process is a method that has been employed at the Santa Francisca Mine, Nicaragua. The ore contains a very large percentage of clay, the slimes amounting to 70 per cent, of the ore. The ore is crushed by a No. 5 Krupp ball mill through a … Read more

Laboratory Mercury Separator 

Laboratory Mercury Separator is extensively used to separate floured mercury or amalgam from the tailings of any amalgamating unit. Pulp is fed into the tube through the funnel in the top, and water is forced in at the lower part of the tube, creating a sufficient up-current to overflow the sands out of the discharge … Read more

Leaching Mercury Sulfide

Hydrometallurgical methods have received increased attention for the treatment of many ores in recent years. Whereas, direct furnacing has been regarded as the standard process for mercury (cinnabar) ores, hydrometallurgical methods offer an alternate consideration. The chemistry of this process is not new, but with the impetus to hydrometallurgical methods, it is only logical that … Read more

Mercury Ore Processing

The concentration of low grade cinnabar, HgS, with a specific gravity of 8.0-8.2 is effectively accomplished by gravity and flotation methods. Cinnabar ores of relatively high mercury content can be retorted directly to expel the sulphur and condense metallic mercury, but for lower grade ores, preliminary concentration is advisable to reduce the tonnage for retorting. … Read more

Gravity Borax Method GBM Mercury Free Gold Recovery

The Gravity-Borax Method GBM is still unknown  to most Artisanal and small-scale gold miners (ASGMs) worldwide as most still use mercury to extract gold. “Whole-ore amalgamation” is a technique that requires the use of 10–25 g of mercury to produce 1 g of gold. Within the last eight years, it has become evident that this technique is more … Read more

Illegal mercury used in small-scale gold mining damages Indonesian lands

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Many developed nations hope 2014 can finally be the year when a real fight against the use of mercury in gold mining across the world starts. However, until then, several countries like Indonesia will continue to suffer the consequences of this and other dangerous techniques. The small-scale, and many times illegal, gold mining operations spread … Read more

Children in the Philippines are damaging their health while mining for gold

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There are currently 115 million children with ages from five to 17 years old who work in hazardous occupations worldwide, the United Nations International Labor Organization estimates. Among them, about a million children work in the mining industry. Hundreds of maybe even thousands of them live in the Philippines. Recently, the Center for Investigative Reporting, in collaboration with the … Read more

Signatories of the Minamata Convention [infographic]

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A document that means “the beginning of the end of mercury as a threat to human health and the environment”. These were the words chosen by the executive director of the UN Environment Programme, Achim Steiner, to describe the Minamata Convention, recently signed by more than 90 countries. These nations vowed to ban several mercury products until 2020 and are planning the … Read more

92 Countries sign anti-mercury treaty

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Japan hosted, earlier this month, the subscription ceremony of a groundbreaking global treaty to reduce mercury pollution. The Minamata Convention, signed by 92 countries, spells “the beginning of the end of mercury as a threat to human health and the environment”, said Achim Steiner, executive director of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), the site All Africa reports. Now that the … Read more