Smelting

  • Smelting gold is the ability to extract the gold from the ore it is combined with. After smelting the gold is around 90 % pure but not acceptable for the market because it still contains other minerals like silver, copper, aluminum or iron.
  • Most important part of the gold mining process because if done improperly, gold will remain in the ore and profits will be lost. All profits from gold are settled by purity and weight so the more impure your product the less it is worth and the more gold you lose, the less you will net in the end.
  • Large companies normally smelt gold on site to cut down on costs but cannot refine gold themselves.
  • Smelting gold is accomplished by using high pressure, heat and various chemicals to breakdown the ore and melt the gold to separate it from the impurities.
  • The gold must be heated to an excess of 1046 degrees Celsius or 2150 degrees Fahrenheit.

Gold ore before melting process

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Burning off impurities

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  • Smelting gold is a very dangerous process. Many of the operations still use liquid mercury to separate the gold from other medals.
  • Mercury is a very toxic and powerful substance which can lead to long term illnesses if handled in the wrong way.
  • Disposing of medals used in this process can be detrimental to the surrounding environment if disposed of improperly. This is a major problem in small mining operations where they smelt on site or in improper factories.

Dore Bars

  • Once the smelting process is over, the gold is poured into bars for transport to the next process. This is the easiest way for transportation because all the gold is uniform and can be stacked. The bars are either poured into 10lbs or 20lbs bars.
  • This is the most common image people have when they think of goldgold12

11 thoughts on “Smelting

  1. Good narration about the system. We need this sort of machinery and system to procure. Pls quote your details list of machinery with capacity of 3 ton per hour.

    • I have some gold concentrate that I have gathered out of the Sierra mountains near where I live. I have done my best to take all of the sand and rock and other parts of the matrix out yet there are some fine sulfides maybe like Mica particulates left that I have not figured out how to separate. Taking mind that this is very very fine gold flower or micron gold dust and also place her like flakes big enough to see and squish with your fingernail or a needle point. Is there anyone that buys this I am having a hard time melting it I’ve tried some different techniques and I have failed. I would like to know if there is anyone that will purchase this for what it is and that will help me to buy some equipment to set up a correct for and to practice my techniques better but I cannot achieve this without some cash so I’ve been holding on to it for a little bit of time and I need to know if it is worth my investment. You can get a hold of me at my number is 1408-591-6302 or you can get a hold of me at berlownoah33@gmail.com

  2. Start to finish smelting of gold using borax and sodium metabosalfate if some one could explained this process to me I would greatly appreciate it, thank you.

  3. I already filled this spot out. Basically it warned of the dangers in recovery and that it’s ok to pay a bit for Good , Safe Instructions.

    • Hi my name is Jeremy I am currently trying to smelt some gold and I seem to be failing miserably as I can’t seem to get my gold consolidated into one piece it seems that the borax is not doing its job or I am not doing mine I have tried in a smelter I also built my own smelter and still no luck I now am trying to smelt in a forge where it seems I can get to a hotter temperature but I am dumbfounded as it almost seems that I am missing a step or something to that sort is there something I need to be adding or doing different to make this work maybe to much borax or just not enough time in the smelter it seems after a few hours I should have burned off all the impurities but as luck would have it I keep getting the black balls I am assuming it is the borax and impurities as I am preparing I have looked at my material under a microscope and it shows true to have gold content what am I doing wrong?

  4. Melting gold and silver, in the industry, can it cause long term illness or disease? Where can I find cases if so.

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