Gold mining

Gold mining is the resource extraction of gold by mining.

Contents
History
Statistics
Methods
Placer mining
Panning Super Pit gold mine in Western
Sluicing Australia
Dredging
Rocker box
Hard rock mining
By-product gold mining
Gold ore processing
Cyanide process
Mercury process
Business
Small operations
Large companies
Adverse effects
Safety
Noise
See also
References
Further reading
External links

Gold-bearing quartz veins in Alaska

History
It is impossible to know the exact date that humans first began to mine gold, but
some of the oldest known gold artifacts were found in the Varna Necropolis in
Bulgaria. The graves of the necropolis were built between 4700 and 4200 BC,
indicating that gold mining could be at least 7000 years old.[1] A group of German
and Georgian archaeologists claims the Sakdrisi site in southern Georgia, dating to
[2]
the 3rd or 4th millennium BC, may be the world's oldest known gold mine.

Bronze age gold objects are plentiful, especially in Ireland and Spain, and there are
several well known possible sources. Romans used hydraulic mining methods, such
A miner underground atPumsaint
as hushing and ground sluicing on a large scale to extract gold from extensive
gold mine Wales; c. 1938?.
alluvial (loose sediment) deposits, such as those at Las Medulas. Mining was under
the control of the state but the mines may have been leased to civilian contractors
some time later. The gold served as the primary medium of exchange within the empire, and was an important motive in the Roman
invasion of Britain by Claudius in the first century AD, although there is only one
known Roman gold mine at Dolaucothi in west Wales. Gold was a prime motivation
for the campaign in Dacia when the Romans invaded Transylvania in what is now
modern Romania in the second century AD. The legions were led by the emperor
Trajan, and their exploits are shown on Trajan's Column in Rome and the several
reproductions of the column elsewhere (such as the Victoria and Albert Museum in
London).[3] Under the Eastern Roman Empire Emperor Justinian's rule, gold was
[4]
mined in the Balkans, Anatolia, Armenia, Egypt, and Nubia.
Landscape of Las Médulas, Spain,
In the area of the Kolar Gold Fields in Bangarpet Taluk, Kolar District of Karnataka the result of hydraulic mining on a
state, India, gold was first mined prior to the 2nd and 3rd century AD by digging vast scale by the Ancient Romans
small pits. (Golden objects found in Harappa and Mohenjo-daro have been traced to
Kolar through the analysis of impurities — the impurities include 11% silver
concentration, found only in KGF ore.) The Champion reef at the Kolar gold fields
was mined to a depth of 50 metres (160 ft) during the Gupta period in the fifth
century AD. During the Chola period in the 9th and 10th century AD, the scale of
the operation grew. The metal continued to be mined by the eleventh century kings
of South India, the Vijayanagara Empire from 1336 to 1560, and later by Tipu
Sultan, the king of Mysore state and the British. It is estimated that the total gold
production in Karnataka to date is 1000 tons.[5]

The mining of the Hungarian deposit (present-day Slovakia) primarily around

Kremnica was the largest of the Medieval period in Europe.[6]

During the 19th century, numerous gold rushes in remote regions around the globe
caused large migrations of miners, such as the California Gold Rush of 1849, the
Victorian Gold Rush, and the Klondike Gold Rush. The discovery of gold in the
Witwatersrand led to the Second Boer War and ultimately the founding of South
Africa.

The Carlin Trend of Nevada, U.S., was discovered in 1961. Official estimates Late 15th and early 16th century
indicate that total world gold production since the beginning of civilization has been mining techniques, De re metallica

around 6,109,928,000 troy ounces (190,040.0 t) and total gold production in Nevada
is 2.5% of that, ranking Nevada as one of the Earth's primary gold producing
regions.[7][8]

As of 2017, the world's largest gold producer by far wasChina with 429.4 tonnes in that year. The second-largest producer, Australia,
mined 289.0 tonnes in the same year, followed by Russia with 273 tonnes.[9]

Statistics
Despite the decreasing gold content of ores, the production is increasing. This can be achieved with industrial installations, and new
process, like hydrometallurgy.
 Trends in some gold-producing Annual world mined gold Gold ore grade evolution
countries production, 1900-2014

Methods

Placer mining
Placer mining is the technique by which gold that has accumulated in a placer
deposit is extracted. Placer deposits are composed of relatively loose material that
makes tunneling difficult, and so most means of extracting it involve the use of
water or dredging.

Panning
Gold panning is mostly a manual technique of separating gold from other materials.
Wide, shallow pans are filled with sand and gravel that may contain gold. The pan is
submerged in water and shaken, sorting the gold from the gravel and other material.
As gold is much denser than rock, it quickly settles to the bottom of the pan. The
panning material is usually removed from stream beds, often at the inside turn in the
stream, or from the bedrock shelf of the stream, where the density of gold allows it Gold in a pan—Alaska
to concentrate, a type called placer deposits.

Gold panning is the easiest and quickest technique for searching for gold, but is not commercially viable for extracting gold from
large deposits, except where labor costs are very low or gold traces are substantial. Panning is often marketed as a tourist attraction
on former gold fields. Before large production methods are used, a new source must be identified and panning is useful to identify
placer gold deposits to be evaluated for commercial viability
.

Sluicing
Using a sluice box to extract gold from placer deposits has long been a very common practice in prospecting and small-scale mining.
A sluice box is essentially a man made channel with riffles set in the bottom. The riffles are designed to create dead zones in the
current to allow gold to drop out of suspension. The box is placed in the stream to channel water flow. Gold-bearing material is
placed at the top of the box. The material is carried by the current through the volt where gold and other dense material settles out
behind the riffles. Less dense material flows out of the box as tailings.

Larger commercial placer mining operations employ screening plants, or trommels, to remove the larger alluvial materials such as
boulders and gravel, before concentrating the remainder in a sluice box or jig plant. These operations typically include diesel
powered, earth moving equipment, including excavators, bulldozers,wheel loaders, and rock trucks.
Dredging
Although this method has largely been replaced by modern methods, some dredging
is done by small-scale miners using suction dredges. These are small machines that
float on the water and are usually operated by one or two people. A suction dredge
consists of a sluice box supported by pontoons, attached to a suction hose which is
controlled by a miner working beneath the water
.

State dredging permits in many of the United States gold dredging areas specify a
seasonal time period and area closures to avoid conflicts between dredgers and the Gold sluicing at Dilban Town, New
Zealand, 1880s
spawning time of fish populations. Some states, such as Montana, require an
extensive permitting procedure, including permits from the U.S. Corps of Engineers,
the Montana Department of Environmental Quality, and the local county water
quality boards.

Some large suction dredges (100 horsepower (75 kW) & 250 mm (10 in)) are used
in commercial production throughout the world. Small suction dredges are much
more efficient at extracting smaller gold than the old bucket line. This has improved
the chances of finding gold. Smaller dredges with 50-to-100-millimetre (2 to 4 in)
suction tubes are used to sample areas behind boulders and along potential pay
streaks, until "colour" (gold) appears.

Other larger scale dredging operations take place on exposed river gravel bars at
seasonal low water. These operations typically use a land based excavator to feed a
gravel screening plant and sluice box floating in a temporary pond. The pond is
Taking gold out of a sluice box,
excavated in the gravel bar and filled from the natural water table. "Pay" gravel is
western North America, 1900s
excavated from the front face of the pond and processed through the floating plant,
with the gold trapped in the onboard sluice box and tailings stacked behind the plant,
steadily filling in the back of the pond as the operation moves forward. This type of gold mining is characterized by its low cost, as
each rock is moved only once. It also has low environmental impact, as no stripping of vegetation or overburden is necessary, and all
process water is fully recycled.Such operations are typical on New Zealand's South Island and in the Klondike region of Canada.

Rocker box
Also called a cradle, it uses riffles located in a high-walled box to trap gold in a similar manner to the sluice box. A rocker box uses
less water than a sluice box and is well suited for areas where water is limited. A rocking motion provides the water movement
needed for the gravity separation of gold in placer material.

Hard rock mining

Hard rock gold mining extracts gold encased in rock, rather than fragments in loose sediment, and produces most of the world's gold.
Sometimes open-pit mining is used, such as at the Fort Knox Mine in central Alaska. Barrick Gold Corporationhas one of the largest
open-pit gold mines in North America located on its Goldstrike mine property in north eastern Nevada. Other gold mines use
underground mining, where the ore is extracted through tunnels or shafts. South Africa has the world's deepest hard rock gold mine
up to 3,900 metres (12,800 ft) underground. At such depths, the heat is unbearable for humans, and air conditioning is required for
the safety of the workers. The first such mine to receive air conditioning was Robinson Deep, at that time the deepest mine in the
world for any mineral.[10]

By-product gold mining

Gold is also produced by mining in which it is not the principal product. Large
copper mines, such as the Bingham Canyon mine in Utah, often recover
considerable amounts of gold and other metals along with copper. Some sand and
gravel pits, such as those around Denver, Colorado, may recover small amounts of
gold in their wash operations. The largest producing gold mine in the world, the
Grasberg mine in Papua, Indonesia, is primarily a copper mine.[11]

A modest amount of precious metal is a by-product of sodium production.

Gold ore processing Hard rock mining at theAssociated

Gold Mine, Kalgoorlie, Australia,
In placer mines, the gold is recovered by gravity separation. For hard rock mining, 1951
other methods are usually used.[12]

Cyanide process
Cyanide extraction of gold may be used in areas where fine gold-bearing rocks are
found. Sodium cyanide solution is mixed with finely ground rock that is proven to
contain gold or silver, and is then separated from the ground rock as gold cyanide or
silver cyanide solution. Zinc is added to precipitate out residual zinc as well as the
silver and gold metals. The zinc is removed with sulfuric acid, leaving a silver or
gold sludge that is generally smelted into an ingot then shipped to a metals refinery
for final processing into 99.9999% pure metals. Gold mining in Coromandel
Peninsula, New Zealand, in the
Advancements in the 1970s have seen activated carbon used in extracting gold from 1890s
the leach solution. The gold is absorbed into the porous matrix of the carbon.
Activated carbon has so much internal surface area,[13] that fifteen grams of it has
the equivalent surface area of the Melbourne Cricket Ground (18,100 square metres (195,000 sq ft)). The gold can be removed from
the carbon by using a strong solution of caustic soda and cyanide, a process known as elution. Gold is then plated out onto steel wool
through electrowinning. Gold specific resins can also be used in place of activated carbon, or where selective separation of gold from
copper or other dissolved metals is required.

The technique using dissolution with alkaline cyanide has been highly developed over recent years. It is particularly appropriate for
low grade gold and silver ore processing (e.g. less than 5 ppm gold) but its use is not restricted to such ores. There are many
environmental hazards associated with this extraction method, largely due to the high acute toxicity of the cyanide compounds
involved. A major example of this hazard was demonstrated in the 2000 Baia Mare cyanide spill, when a break in holding pond dam
at a mine waste reprocessing facility near Baia Mare in northern Romania released approximately 100,000 cubic metres
(3,500,000 cu ft) of waste water contaminated with heavy metal sludge and up to 120 long tons (122 t) of cyanide into the Tisza
River.[14] As a consequence, most countries now have strict regulations for cyanide in plant discharges, and plants today include a
specific cyanide-destruction step before discharging their tailings to a storage facility.

Mercury process
Historically, mercury was used extensively inplacer gold mining in order to form mercury-gold amalgam with smaller gold particles,
and thereby increase the gold recovery rates. Large-scale use of mercury stopped in the 1960s. However, mercury is still used in
artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM), often clandestine, gold prospecting.[15] It is estimated that 45,000 metric tons of
mercury used in California for placer mining have not been recovered.

Business
Small operations
While most of the gold is produced by major corporations, tens of thousands of
people work independently in smaller, artisan operations, in some cases illegally. In
Ghana, for instance, the galamseys are estimated to number 20,000 to 50,000.[16] In
neighboring francophone countries, such workers are called orpailleurs. In Brazil,
such workers are calledgarimpeiros.

The high risk of such ventures was seen in the collapse of an illegal mine at
Dompoase, Ashanti Region, Ghana, on 12 November 2009, when 18 workers were
killed, including 13 women. Many women work at such mines as porters. It was the
worst mining disaster in Ghanaian history.[16] Woman panning for gold in Guinea

In order to maximize gold extraction, mercury is often used to amalgamate with the
metal. The gold is produced by boiling away the mercury from the amalgam.
Mercury is effective in extracting very small gold particles, but the process is
hazardous due to the toxicity of mercury vapour
.

Especially after the Minamata Convention has been ratified, there are initiatives to
[17]
replace or reduce the use and emissions of mercury in the extraction of gold.

Large companies Old bellows on abandoned gold mine

Barrick Gold, Goldcorp, Newmont Mining Corporation, Newcrest Mining, and in western N.S.W., Australia

AngloGold Ashanti are the world's five largest gold mining companies by market
capitalisation in 2008.

Adverse effects
Gold mining can significantly alter the natural environment. For example, gold mining activities in tropical forests are increasingly
causing deforestation along rivers and in remote areas rich in biodiversity.[18][19] Other gold mining impacts, particularly in aquatic
systems with residual cyanide or mercury (used in the recovery of gold from ore), can be highly toxic to people and wildlife even at
relatively low concentrations.[20]

However, there are clear moves by many in the non-governmental organization community to encourage more environmentally
friendly and sustainable business practices in the mining industry. The primary way this is being achieved is via the promotion of so-
called 'clean' or 'ethical' gold. The aim is to get all end users/retailers of gold to adhere to set of principles that encourage sustainable
mining. Campaigns such as 'No Dirty Gold'[21] are driving the message that the mining industry is harmful (for the reasons noted
above), and so must be cleaned up. Also, NGOs are urging the industry and consumers to buy sustainably produced gold. Human
Rights Watch produced a report[22] that outlines some of challenges faced globally, noting that: "Thousands of children in the
Philippines risk their lives every day mining gold. Children work in unstable 25-meter-deep pits that could collapse at any moment.
They mine gold underwater, along the shore, or in rivers, with oxygen tubes in their mouths. They also process gold with mercury, a
toxic metal, risking irreversible health damage from mercury poisoning." Along with many other reports and articles, this has had the
effect of spurring retailers and industry bodies to move toward sustainable gold. Indeed, the World Jewellery Confederation insists
that it does all it can to "Deliver a Sustainable and Responsible Jewellery Industry
."[1] Likewise, the use of so-calledFairtrade gold is
growing; with businesses moving over to, or at least of
fering, this option at both retail and wholesale levels.

Safety

Noise
The Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) has set noise exposure limits for those within the mining industry. These noise
exposure guidelines state that the "Permissible Exposure Level" (PEL) of noise is 90 dBA as an 8-hour time-weighted-average. [23]
Mine workers exposed to a time-weighted average of at least 85 dBA fall into the "Action Level" in which workers with exposures
exceeding that level are placed into a hearing conservation program. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
(NIOSH) has examined noise exposures of gold mine workers. One study found that gold mine workers noise exposures ranged from
165-261% of the MSHA PEL. [24] Haul truck operators, load-haul-dump operators, single boom drill operators, and roof bolter
[24]
operators represented the occupations with the highest noise exposures within gold mines.

See also
Sibanye Gold
Gold extraction
Gold rush
Gold prospecting
Ore genesis
Peak gold
Quartz reef mining
Recreational gold mining
Gold mining by country:

Witwatersrand around Johannesburg, South Africa

Witwatersrand Basin in South Africa
Deepest mines on earth are the gold mines in South Africa
Gold mining in Africa
Gold mining in South Africa
Gold mining in Australia
Gold mining in the United States
Gold mining in Alaska
City of Gold in Canada
Gold mining in China
Gold mining in India
Hatti Gold Mines
Kolar Gold Fields
Gold mining in Guyana
Aurora gold mine
Omai mine
Toroparu mine
Gold mining in Pakistan:
Reko Diq Mine
Saindak Copper Gold Project
Welsh gold
Sukari, Egypt
Gold rushes:

United States: British Commonwealth:

Georgia Gold Rush (beginning 1828) Australian gold rushes (1850s)
California Gold Rush (1848–1855) Victorian Gold Rush (1851–1860s)
Pike's Peak Gold Rush(1858–1860) Fraser Canyon Gold Rush(late 1850s), Canada
Holcomb Valley gold rush (1860s) Witwatersrand Gold Rush(1880s), South Africa
Klondike Gold Rush (1896–1899), Canada
Central Otago Gold Rush(1860s), New Zealand

References
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Further reading
Ali, Saleem H. (2006), "Gold Mining and the Golden Rule: A Challenge for Developed and Developing Countries",
Journal of Cleaner Production, 14 (3–4): 455–462, doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2004.05.009
DUPARC, Sacha J. (2011),Thematic Investments: Gold Miners' Free Cash Flows Expansion: Gold Prices Far
Outpacing Capital & Operational Costs

External links
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