How mobile is gold in RC or AC sample piles? If it is fine free gold I could imagine it can be blown away or get removed by water but if it is bound in clay or is in quartz as an example, I assume it shouldn't be affected too much. Is this correct? Thanks
Dear Jan Becker thanks for asking this interesting technical question. In this context please have a look at the following potentially useful research articles which might help you in your analysis:
Sampling - A critical component to gold mining project evaluation
Article Sampling - A critical component to gold mining project evaluation
and
Sampling coarse gold-bearing mineralisation - developing effective protocols and a case study from the nalunaq deposit, Southern Greenland
Article Sampling coarse gold-bearing mineralisation - developing eff...
Both articles have been posted by the authors as public full texts on RG, so they can be freely downloaded as pdf files.
Good luck with your work and best wishes!
Thanks for your answer Frank! I will have a read through the articles. Do you know of any publications that focus more on the weathering of sample piles?
Dear Jan, many thanks for your kind response. I'm actually not a proven expert in this field as we work in synthetic inorganic chemistry. However, I just came across the following article which might be of interest to you:
LITERATURE REVIEW OF OTHER ROCK PILES: CHARACTERIZATION, WEATHERING, AND STABILITY
https://geoinfo.nmt.edu/staff/mclemore/documents/ofr_517.pdf
(see attached pdf file)
P.S. In your original question you mentioned that "If it is fine free gold I could imagine it can be blown away". Keep in mind that gold is very heavy. Thus other particles of the same size will be blown away first. In this context please have a look at the following iteresting link:
Prospector blowing on pan of fine dirt which contains particles of gold in order to blow the dirt away and leave the heavy gold. In this dry panning the pan is rotated until the dirt is on one side and then with a decisive toss it is thrown into the air, the light dirt being then blown away by the wind and the heavy gold being caught again in the pan. Pinos Altos, New Mexico
https://www.loc.gov/item/2017742234/
Hi jan intresting question. Depends on the style of clay? Goethite clay tends to weakly ionically attract gold and once it hits that stuff it doesnt like to move. However free gold can move up to 7km they do like to settle behind back eddys and rock bars and will settle as to such time erosional levels reach its location and move it on. Gold will also travel on specimens until natures own ball mill grinds it down. Is your question in realtion to conducting stream sediment assay's to finding a source?
Hi Luke, Thanks for your answer. My question was more in relation to the effectiveness of sampling historical AC/RC piles and if it is time critical to sample currently drilled AC holes. I was wondering if it makes a difference if the piles get sampled on the same day of drilling or say 2 weeks later. Heavy winds and/or rain falls can obviously contaminate and intermix the sample piles and I guess it is best practise to sample as soon as possible. Interesting fact about goethite though, I did not know that!
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