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| ON SALE IN THE NEXT FEW DAYS AS A LOW-COST ELECTRONIC DOWNLOAD | |
The 34 CHAPTERS of this remarkable book: | |
 | CHAPTER 1... …see how to minimise environmental impacts and maximise efficiency to generate higher profits. It may seem odd that LESS impacts = MORE profits, but this is demonstrated throughout the book. |
 | CHAPTER 2... …why gold is special, some properties that make gold so special, and a brief look at how gold becomes concentrated near the Earth’s surface in valuable loose deposits known as ‘placers’ – the main topic of the book. |
 | CHAPTER 3... …become aware of the fascinating diversity of placer mines across the world, straddling most continents, climates and ecosystems! See the challenge of preparing ‘Best Available Techniques’ for such a scattered fragmented industry. |
 | CHAPTER 4... ...get acquainted with placer gold miners from loners to multinational corporations, ‘informal’ to ‘formal’, ‘illegal’ to ‘legal’, ‘artisanal’ to ‘industrial’, plus the growing band of recreational miners. All colliding, competing and co-operating in their endless quest for placer gold. |
 | CHAPTER 5... …get to grips with the detail of artisanal placer gold miners, using the people’s gold rush in Mongolia as a spectacular example. Driven by rural poverty and natural disasters, tens of thousands of nomads and farm workers suddenly turned to placer gold mining in order to survive. |
 | CHAPTER 6... …see how a ‘formal’ gold rush can be triggered by a government making licenses cheap and easy to obtain through a simple mining cadastre. In this modern example, the Mongolian Government made freely available a billion dollars of soviet exploration. Now 130 placer companies are in the scramble, producing 11 tons of gold a year. |
 | CHAPTER 7... …take a tour through the environmental damage caused by hordes of artisanal placer gold miners. A few might not matter much, but take ten thousand or so in a district and the cumulative impact can trigger environmental mayhem, especially with mercury, dust, desertification… |
 | CHAPTER 8... ...our next tour is of environmental damage caused by mining companies. It takes just one rogue placer operator to damage a valley, but take a cluster of rogue mines and the cumulative impact can blight a whole region for generations. Little wonder placer mining has a bad image. |
 | CHAPTER 9... …we apply BAT – Best Available Techniques – to small-scale placer gold mining operations typical of artisanal miners. Artisanal gold miners lack know-how about safe and efficient mining methods, and take remarkable risk of injury or death, risks than can be minimised by low-cost methods presented in this Chapter. |
 | CHAPTER 10... ...we apply BAT - BEST Available Techniques – to small-scale gold recovery typical of artisanal miners and show ZERO MERCURY is BAT. Mercury poses unacceptable health and environmental risks. Mercury amalgam is outdated, not necessary, and NOT essential for profits! |
 | CHAPTER 11... …we present the many different ways of exploring for placer gold, to arrive at Best Available Techniques. Even if you’ve been drilling for placer gold for years, brace yourself for some surprises, especially the widespread and serious underestimation of gold grades by most drilling! READ about describing gold |
 | CHAPTER 12... …learn how to measure a ‘resource’ of gold-in-the-ground, by putting borehole records into spreadsheets and using EXCEL software. If you’ve not used EXCEL before, this Chapter is of great use! Read how to turn a resource into an assessment of mineable gold known as a ‘reserve’. Only a reserve can satisfy financiers and investors in a bankable proposal. |
 | CHAPTER 13... …learn how to prepare a Financial Proposal for a new or expanded gold mine, ready for submitting to investors and banks. This type of Business Plan is hybrid of 'factual document' and ‘selling document’. Find out how to prepare integrated Financial Spreadsheets to accompany the Business Plan, again using simple EXCEL software to do the calculations. |
 | CHAPTER 14... …read how to manage a placer mine efficiently to maximise efficiency and safety minimise environmental impacts. Remarkably, respect for the environment often leads to higher profits! |
 | CHAPTER 15... …learn how to rehabilitate a placer mine effectively, quickly and AT LOW COST. Rehabilitating every day is CHEAPER. Doing mine rehabilitation a little every day satisfies local communities and regulators and avoids the headache of trying to clear dereliction after the mine closes, the income has finished and the machinery departed. |
 | CHAPTER 16... …we examine a wide range of equipment used in WET placer mining, discuss the pros and cons and decide which is BAT. Learn about large, medium and small bucket-line gold dredges, pontoon wash-plants, suction gold dredges, cutter suction gold dredges, gold grab dredges and more besides. |
 | CHAPTER 17... …we examine ‘dry’ equipment used in placer mining, discuss the pros and cons and decide which are BAT. Details are given of front-end loaders, hydraulic excavators, face shovels, scrapers, bucket-wheel excavators, tracked draglines, walking draglines and many more machines seen at placer gold mines. |
 | CHAPTER 18... …we look at some issues that affect the screening of the placer to reject the oversize - Why bother screening? Why does the hole size matter so much? Why does the bulk density of the placer make a big difference? Why are there so many different methods? All have merit, except that static screens are rarely BAT! |
 | CHAPTER 19... …first we debate how to choose a wash-plant – static, semi-mobile or fully mobile; large or small; prefabricated or built on-site; electric-power or off-grid; large or small water consumption; and specialised, simple or multifunctional? Then learn how to check the % gold recovery of a wash-plant before you buy it, and how to 'tune' your wash-plant to increase gold recovery. |
 | CHAPTER 20... …we probe why some wash-plants fail and delve deep into gravitational settling. Read about the GOLD PARTICLE PHYSICS that are outside Newton's Laws. For instance, when settled sediment re-mobilise and its particles then display motion like a gas or liquid or solid. Learn about the mystery of gold particles actively moving in settled sediment! |
 | CHAPTER 21... …we start exploring the bewildering range of gravitational methods for recovering gold, and the ability of equipment to recover gold efficiently. Learn why mercury is so tempting to use – paving the way for later sections where each gravitational method is examined in detail. |
 | CHAPTER 22... ...having mastered settling and how to test a wash-plant, see gold recovery equipment from Settling Towers to Jigs. Lumping these together is unorthodox, but has merit as relationships are instructive and illuminating. In particular, gain remarkable insight into how jigs catch gold, and about the many devices that are related to gold jigs. |
 | CHAPTER 23... …learn about the pinched sluice – simple to make and effective at catching gold. See how the pinched sluice led to the Reichert Cone, and how it helps explain the Blue Bowl and even the Popswirl! We coin the term ‘Swirl Towers’ for density separators that add swirling inside a Elutriation Tower, and finally we describe cyclones that recover gold. |
 | CHAPTER 24... ...read a scientific but readable account of the sluice, and why it is unbeaten in catching coarse gold, and unrivalled in its concentration power. Then take a tour of types of sluices popular in different parts of the world - some are BAT but many are not; all are ingenious, all striving to push the sluice to its limit! |
 | CHAPTER 25... ...learn how by spreading particles in a thin layer, a whole group of ‘thin film concentrators’ had evolved - from simple tables to advanced tables twisted into spirals. Learn how thin films can be turned into concentrators using laminar flow, vertical segregation, friction and splitting. |
 | CHAPTER 26... …the limited ability of wash-plants to recover fine gold, led inventors to devise centrifugal devices to stimulate settling by an enhanced gravitational field. Learn the details of the Knudsen bowl, Knelson bowl, Gekko Spinner, Falcon bowl, Falcon Superbowl, Itomak bowl and many other types of gold centrifuge. |
 | CHAPTER 27... …learn about remarkable equipment that make use of the reverse helix of the Archimedes screw to recover gold-concentrate, ranging from simple home-made helix barrels to the innovative helix belts and the remarkable gold wheel. |
 | CHAPTER 28... …efforts are being made worldwide to reduce the use of mercury in gold recovery. But most efforts have been on mercury reduction and use of retorts. The Chapter shows that now is the time to seek total mercury elimination by switching to effective chemical and gravitational methods for recovering gold. |
 | CHAPTER 29... …we review one-by-one the many alternative procedures for upgrading the concentrate ranging from gravity to magnetics, mercury amalgamation, cyanidation and a host of other chemical methods. The goal is to upgrade the concentrate until it is rich enough to turn it into a gold bar. |
 | CHAPTER 30... …we look briefly at how the final clean concentrate is smelted into bars of dore gold, and then how these bars are assayed for purity. |
 | CHAPTER 31... …we discuss how to create a mineral policy that leads to laws and regulations that balance the interests of all stakeholders. This is a very difficult and daunting task for government, and to succeed it needs an inclusive dialogue with all stakeholders – plus know-how about BAT! |
 | CHAPTER 32... …we explore how to implement policies at local level – demanding a package of training, standards and monitoring. Unless these THREE legs are balanced and coordinated, then government policy will fail. Artisanal miners need a different package from mining companies, but there has to be links! |
 | CHAPTER 33... …we get to grips with Environmental Impact Assessment (EIAs) and why the EIA system can –sometimes – play a central role in getting the best deal for the placer miner, the environment and the local community. |
 | CHAPTER 34... …over 6,000 references to articles, reports and papers on placer gold mining across the world, arranged country by country. Many are in hard-to-find or expensive academic journals but hundreds are ARE ON THE INTERNET TO DOWNLOAD FREE-OFCHARGE. Do what the author did, download until you drop! CLICK to see a sample. |
