Dealing with MERCURY - A "Retort"

[Sierra Sam]

The word is RETORT. At least that's what I found when I Googled mercury and gold.
According to Merriam-Webster the definition of RETORT is: a vessel or chamber in which substances are distilled or decomposed by heat

Good news - I found a new spot to dig.





Bad news - the new stuff that's showing up in my cons. Lots of pyrite (a real pain in the... to pan) and mercury. A nice little nugget showed up in my sluice covered in the stuff (mercury). Also, many little balls of the stuff with each pan.



Finding all sorts of designs for retorts I figured it was fairly simple in principle and "should be" easy to fabricate. So, I built myself one.







My problem was not knowing what the heck I was doing. I ended up frying my nice little nugget instead of just burning off the mercury.





Lesson learned - too much heat will easily trash things.

Good news is the retort works!

[Gold Seeker]

Good Job but be careful when using that retort if it sucks water up the tube when cooling it could explode!!

The gold will look like that almost every time you burn/retort off mercury.

Drop that nugget into some vinegar and let it soak for a day or 3 and it will be nice and shiny!!!


Skip

[dickb]

That propane torch wont get the nugget hot enough to melt. Always keep your gold with mecury in a seperate bottle from non contanimated gold. After you distill the mecury, save it in a bottle filled with water. That way it will not vaporize off.

You don't want to breath in any mecury vapors so do it outside and since mecury boils at room temp, you don't have to heat the retort all that hot.

Be safe!

Dickb

[Sierra Sam]

Dickb - While I wholly concur that one should use all precautions when dealing with mercury and it's vapors, from everything I can find on the subject, and according to the University of Illinois' Department of Physics, Mercury's boiling point is 629.88 K (356.73 °C, 674.11 °F). Not room temp.

After all, I come from a time when kids brought mercury coated coins to school, or a bit of mercury which we unwittingly rolled around in the palm of our hand with little regard to the biohazzard of such practice. It was just fun to play with.

Skip - Good to know about the crucible creating a vacuum and water being sucked up the tube. Especially since that crucible configuration is similar to the old, cast iron pineapple grenade

My big problem seems to be fusion; While Dickb says the propane won't melt gold, I now have a gold plated crucible. Something I hadn't quite planned on. Another issue is the fact that the mercury ended up condensing on the inside of the crucible and tube in fine beedlets. I managed to capture most of it following the burn-off, but I then had to recharge the mercury to get it to glob back together. The beedlets were very tiny.

Thanks for the input guys, I'll take all I can get. Here's hope'n I don't blow myself up.



This little guy showed up on top of everything in my bucket of cons after shaking it a bunch to get the mercury to concentrate. Go figure. Yes, those are very BIG fingers.

[Gold Seeker]

While I do agree that mercury will not boil at room temperature, it will evaporate at room temperature, here's a link to a site that has a video showing the invisible vapors evaporating off mercury, you won't normally be able to see this but it does happen at room temperature, so always be upwind when messing with mercury.

http://test4mercury.com/Mercury_Vapor_Videos.htm

Sam, I also played with mercury as a youngster, it was cool seeing how something liquid wouldn't soak into anything and just rolled around like it does, not to mention it was a metal but yet a liquid I'm sure the EPA would of had a heart attack if they were around then and IIIIIIIIII ddddooon'''t seeeemm to haaaaaave annnny lasssssstting affffeccccccttttts frrrroooom iiitttt eeeeeeithhheeer!!!!

Here a link to a simple 4 part video, the subject is how to construct a very simple but safe tube retort (no BOOM) and how to use it with either a propane torch or a wood fire, plus some very good info on how to safely use mercury for gold mining, containing it, recharging it, and recovering the mercury, click on the link for the next part after each video.

Every gold miner that run into or uses mercury should watch these videos, pass it on to others.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KL9deyMSzs8


Skip

[Hoser John]

No flux in crucible will give ya your mess=a nice pretty golden crucible. Simply crush and recover the gold and then do again with flux-John

[Sierra Sam]

John - I'm a bit confused? I normally use flux to join two dissimilar metals together. Wouldn't the addition of flux merely insure "complete" coverage of the inside of my crucible with the precious stuff I'm trying to extricate from the mercury?

[Gold Seeker]

I know in smelting you would use a flux that forms a glass that encapsulates the impurities and the gold sinks to to bottom, but I've never heard of using a flux when using a retort, hmmm I guess you're never to old to learn.


Skip