Survey Mining In Afghanistan

Commercial drill rigs are a rare sight in Afghanistan. Problems affecting the country's infrastructure and instability have left mining projects in their infancy, but Afghanistan is a geological treasure trove.

"There is a working gold mine in Baghlan at the moment and in Sheberghan we've got gas and petrol. The north of Afghanistan has lots of mining opportunities.

In Jegdalek there are gemstones and in Mes Aynak there is copper, iron and chromium and other valuable minerals.

Drillers and geologists are among the first cohort of trainees from the Afghanistan Geological Survey being taught by the US Dod Task Force for Business and Stability Operations. The students are gaining the skills they need to explore and exploit the country's resources,by training in modern explorative techniques.

The next step for these drillers will be to push out into the country's mountains. Hope is that security will improve still, because there is still some insecurity in some of Afghanistan's provinces.

If the security improves, they will be able to go freely everywhere in Afghanistan to conduct surveys.

"And if Afghanistan's security does improve, the Afghan government will be first in line to exploit the nearly 3 trillion dollars of resources lying in its hills and mountains.

It's hoped that the mining sector could become one of the Afghan economy's strongest assets.

"There has effectively been a hiatus of exploration activity in Afghanistan largely on account of the security issues, for perhaps around 20 to 25 years.

The Russians in the mid-1970s did a considerable amount of work, but after the invasion and through the eighties, nineties and now in the first part of the century there hasn't been that much work done.

So there fore within the donor community there has been a great push to provide technical expertise to build capacity within the Afghan Ministry of Mines and Petroleum and within the Afghan Geological Survey to help the Afghans help them selves and to develop their mineral resources and to exploit those resources for profit.

" Afghanistan's Geological Survey team will have an opportunity to play a vital part in their country's economy.

Much hinges on a long-awaited mining law to be passed ensuring the country's resources are fairly and legally exploited.

Video Survey Mining for minerals in Afghanistan

Hydrometallurgy For Gold Leaching

Refiners hydrometallurgy will give examples of careers and precious metals using chemistry both inorganic and organic, chemical engineering, metallurgical engineering and others. Hydrometallurgy for gold refers the processing techniques that require wet chemistry approaches to separate the precious metals from the surrounding materials vs pyrometallurgy which requires heating and smelting operations to perform the separation.

Hydrometallurgy to take many forms depending on the substrate or the material which contains the precious metals. Many of these chemicals used are very hazardous and these processes should only be done by professional refiners

Hydrometallurgy is an extractive metallurgy process using aqueous solutions to recover metals it involves technologies with solubilize, concentrate and then recover specific metals.

For example a first step maybe to chemically dissolve or leach a material to eventually extract metals by means of precipitation or electrically reducing the metals.  Leaching is the first process used to extract metals into an aqueous solution, chemical acids or alkali eyes are used to convert metals into soluble salts within the solution.

For example aqua regia is a highly corrosive acid mixture of nitric and hydrochloric acids which will dissolve most metals, including gold platinum and paladium

In the other platinum group metals however do not dissolve in aqua regia so it can be used to separate these groups, all those silver also dissolves in aqua regia it immediately precipitates to silver chloride so does not go in the solution. Nitric acid alone is used to dissolve silver.

The different gold leaching processes are descriptively named :

Gold leaching processe

1. Situ Leaching

 In situ leaching also called  solution mining. Extrating the minerals directly from ore in the mining. Leach solutions are pumped through the ore to surface.  In situ leaching is occasionally used in select mining operations to leach precious metals from surrounding rock structures.

2. Heap leaching is routinely used to remove gold from ore deposits in tailings

3.Vat leaching is most frequently used when removing gold from secondary scrap materials such as electronic scrap or even jewelry scrap

See Also : 
How To Work The Heap Leaching Mining  
Gold Leaching Process With Carbon In Pulp

4. Agitated leaching is where the material is saved in slurry with the extracting solution.

5. Pressure leaching places the material, solvent along autoclaves to pressurize heat, it is also used when gases need to be added for the leaching reaction.

The pressure oxidation process the free gold is an example of this cyanidation and chlorination are other pressure leaching processes, after leaching solution concentration and purification steps are employed to further concentrate and separate the precious metals

These refining processes can be used for precious metals extracted from primary remaining sources as well as secondary sources of industrial or recycle scrap materials

Video How To Refine Precious Metals - Hydrometallurgy

The Products Of Gold Ore

 Gold within rock

Gold is produced from both primary and secondary sources , primary sources are mining activities and these take a variety of forms hard rock underground mining, open pit mining and dredging in the ocean lakes rivers and streams. Secondary sources refer to materials coming from recycled scrap metal scrap jewelry scrap electronic scrap spent sputtering targets and many others gold

From primary remaining sources in the american prospect is panning for both flakes and small nuggets in Riverbend ancient cultures occasionally found gold and silver and riverbeds also low deposit work gold is found within rock and placer deposits is where erosion has washed down from the hills and outcroppings of metal near the surface this lustrous and ductile.

Small nuggets from river

Metal was sought after throughout the centuries by almost all cultures metal jewelry artwork and eventually finding a place as monetary currency the majority of gold is mine from mineral deposits where it's found mixed with other metals and minerals these deposits are called or the ancient

Egyptians Greeks and Romans all developed underground mining operations a low deposits more than 2,000 years ago many of these vines especially in eastern europe greece turkey and other middle eastern countries are still economically viable and in production

Today pores are concentrated in veins which were formed millions of years ago deep under the earth surface. These veins were formed from hot water rising from hot magma the metal slowly precipitated out along these complex veins

Mines will also have side streams of gold and silver production which help. Their bottom line approximately twenty percent of gold is produced as a byproduct of copper and silver mining operations.

Following numerous paths approximately 70 million ounces of gold our mind each year the highest concentrations of gold found in North and South America are on both sides of the mountain ranges that run the length of these regions the sierra nevada in north america and the Andes in South America gold and silver are almost universally found in conjunction with copper deposits virtually all copper

Video  The Products Of Gold Ore

Gold Technology Carbon In Leach From Curtin University

Technology Carbon In Leach

Curtin University’s Gold Technology Grouph as designed and developed an automated “Carbon Meter" to continuously, reliably and accurately measure carbon concentrations in CIL tanks.

Currently, measuring the carbon to slurryratio involves taking a small sample from the tank, it’s time-consuming and has drawbacks interms of frequency, accuracy, and repeatability.

To optimising this process, you must precisely control the ratio of activated carbon to slurry.

Simply put, too much carbon is inefficient, while too little allows dissolved gold tobe lost to tailings.

But to control it, you first have to measure it. And this is true for the Carbon In Leachor CIL gold extraction process. Carbon-in-Leach accounts for about 75% of the world’s gold production.

Process Carbon In Leach

In this process, ground, gold-bearing ore is dissolved in a chemical slurry. Granules of activated carbon are added to absorb the dissolved gold, before further processing.

See Also :
Extracting Gold By Carbon In Pulp with Activated Carbon
Gold Processing With Method Carbon In Pulp 

This robust, self-contained unit takes sample sup to 20 times larger than the manual method, every 15 minutes, 24 hours per day, whichit feeds into a measurement cylinder that strains the larger carbon particles from the slurry before a laser beam accurately measures the amount of captured carbon.

This data, along with the well-established SIMCIL modelling tool, is used to optimise carbon management to a degree not previously possible.

The end result is less soluble gold lost to tailings. Gold producers are processing higher tonnages of lower grades of ore than ever before.

And along with fluctuating gold prices and increased costs, optimising processes is the key tolong-term profitability.

For many CIL operations, optimisations resulting in recovery a 100th of a gram more gold per tonne of slurry processed, can increase annual revenue by millions of dollars. And this is a significant benefit for any mining operation.

Activated  Carbon for Carbon In Leach

Video Gold Technology Carbon In Leach From Curtin University

Prospecting For Lode Gold Deposits

Most lode gold deposits are found in quartz veins that commonly called “Bull Quartz” by miners that are usually emplaced in a fault zone that might consist of one large vein or a whole series of quartz veins holding gold, or both.

According to one the glossary of geology, “a lode is a mineral deposit consisting of a zone of veins, veinlets, disseminations, or planar breccias; a mineral deposit in consolidated rock.

Lode gold occurs within the solid rock in which it was deposited. Areas likely to contain valuable lode deposits of gold have been explored so thoroughly that the inexperienced prospector without ample capital has little chance of discovering a new lode worth developing. Most future discoveries of workable lode gold ore probably will result from continued investigations in areas known to be productive in the past.

Prospecting for lode deposits of gold is not the relatively simple task it once was because most outcrops or exposures of mineralized rock have been examined and sampled. Today's prospector must examine not only these exposures, but also broken rock on mine dumps and exposures of mineralized rock in accessible mine workings. Gold, if present, may not be visible in the rock, and detection will depend on the results of laboratory analyses. Usually, samples of 3 to 5 pounds of representative mineralized rock will be sent to a commercial analytical laboratory or assay office for assay. Obviously, knowledge about the geological nature of gold deposits and particularly of the rocks and deposits in the area of interest will aid the prospector.

The dictionary definition of a vein is more complex include some of the definitions :

1.  An epigenetic mineral filling of a fault or fracture in a host rock, in tabular or sheet-like form, often with associated replacement of the host rock; a mineral deposit of this form and origin.

2. A zone or belt of mineralized rock lying within boundaries clearly separating it from neighboring rock. It includes all deposits of mineral matter found through a mineralized zone or belt coming from the same source, and appearing to have been created by the same processes

3. A rock fissure filled by intruded mineral matter. Many valuable minerals are co-deposited with gangue in veins. Usually the formation is steep to vertical, unlike a bedded deposit in which values are sandwiched horizontally. Vein is typically long, deep, and relatively narrow.

4. The term lode is commonly used synonymously for vein.

Most prospectors visualize a lode to be a distinct vein of quartz. But lodes include more than just veins. But let’s briefly look at veins first.  Veins can be formed primarily of quartz, but another common gangue mineral is calcite. Gangue minerals are worthless material that is found with valuable minerals, and when combined, the two produce ore. So ore is just a mixture of the good and bad stuff.

 The formation of ore shoot in veins is not entirely understood, but they appear in many cases to be the result of changes in chemistry sometimes due to changes in the rock type in the wall rocks. They have been identified where veins are folded or where veins intersect other veins or fractures.

Video Technical Level Basic How To Find Lode Gold Deposit