When Gold Dust Settles
Gold dust refers to fine particles of gold. Gold dust is most often generated when gold is being mined. Gold mining involves all the processes used to extract gold from the ground. As gold is lifted off the earth and the rock to which it clings to, traces of dusts of gold dust are left behind.
Gold mining processes include gold panning, metal detecting, sluicing, dredging, hydraulic mining, hard rock mining, byproduct gold mining and gold ore processing.
Among these methods, hard rock mining, byproduct gold mining and gold ore processing often leave traces of dusts of gold behind. This is because in the case of these three, gold is encased in rock not as loose particles. Gold processing is more complicated and more labor intensive in these methods.
Mining Processes
Hard rock mining oftentimes uses underground mining. In this method, the gold is extracted from tunnels or shafts. When gold is mined this way, digging through the tunnel produces gold dust.
As the gold is extracted from big boulders of rock using specialized machines that dig through deep tunnels and shafts, dusts of gold is a natural by-product. Hard rock mining is known to produce the most gold because of this method of seeking out deep crevices for gold.
Byproduct gold mining could also produce gold dust. This is because in this method of mining, gold is not really the principal product being mined. Mining other metals such as copper often results in extracting large amounts of gold too. Dusts of gold are also byproduct in extracting these minerals.
Gold ore processing uses gravity separation in recovering gold. It uses gold cyanidation process wherein cyanide solution is mixed with ground rock that is known to contain gold. Grounding rock to a pulp would generate dusts and produce gold dust in the process.
Both surface and sub-surface mining produce gold dust. Extraction of gold using these processes often leads to grinding of huge rocks or boulders in order to get into the deep sources of gold usually under the surface of earth. In the process, traces of gold dust will unwittingly be left behind. The dust accumulates as the mining process is underway.
If accidentally eaten, the gold dust is non-toxic and non-irritating. As a matter of fact, gold dust is sometimes used a food decoration. Gold dust is also part of alcoholic drinks Goldschlager, Gold Strike and Goldwasser. Gold dust is an approved food additive in the
European Union as outlined in E175 in the food code Codex Alimentarius.
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