My Gold Rush Career Begins in 1984

Chapter 43 Mercury Alchemy
Peng Yuanchao moved a wooden stump, sat down next to the dugout, and carefully picked out the gold from the fine sand.

Zhou Jingming didn't go to help. Instead, he led Jin Wang up into the woods behind the dugout to a high point on the hillside to check the situation upstream and downstream of the valley.

By now, there are more than a dozen teams in the valley, with at least 160 or 170 people.

After watching for a while, he led the lively Jinwang back to the dugout, where he saw that Peng Yuanchao had already selected the gold, put it in an earthen bowl, and placed it on the fire pipe of the earthen stove to dry it.

He glanced at the small aluminum basin again; the remaining black sand powder in the basin had already been washed away and poured out. He frowned slightly and asked, "Brother Peng, why did you throw away the rest of that stuff?"

Peng Yuanchao was taken aback: "Why keep it if it's not going to fall off? I know there's still some gold dust left inside, but that stuff is too fine to pick out. There's no use in keeping it."

"How could it be useless?"

Zhou Jingming sighed: "You've been a gold prospector for quite some time now, mercury alchemy... you've never heard of it?"

Peng Yuanchao laughed: "I know that, but mercury isn't cheap. It's too much of a price to pay for such a tiny bit of gold dust. It's not worth it. Just pick out what you can. There's not much point in doing all that. Besides, mercury turns into gas and can easily cause poisoning."

"What, you think I'm wasteful? If you want it, I'll save the rest for you; you can take care of it yourself. I don't want it."

Clearly, Peng Yuanchao knew about this method that the ancients had used long ago, but he was too lazy to bother with it and didn't care about that little bit of gold.

Mercury refining is a type of traditional alchemy.

In the general gold refining process, many chemicals are often added to refine crude gold with low purity into pure gold through chemical extraction methods, such as adding mercury to dissolve it or adding sodium chloride to dissolve it.

Mercury has a unique characteristic: it is a white, liquid heavy metal at room temperature. It has low solubility in water, but it can dissolve in gold and silver.

Long ago, the ancients already knew how to use mercury to refine gold.

In the past, during the process of refining gold from mercury, miners would dig out gold-bearing ore, first crush the ore, and then grind it into powder using iron wheels under their feet. Similar to panning for gold dust, they would use the principle of specific gravity and a hand-cranked gold bucket to separate the crushed stone from the gold dust using water.

But this is only the process of panning for gold; the process of refining gold is much more complicated.

The gold dust extracted must first be treated with mercury to remove it.

In simple terms, it is what later generations called the physical reduction method. It uses the property of "mercury biting gold but not sand" to further separate gold from fine sand and gravel. This requires a process. After the gold is separated from those impurities by mercury biting gold, it must be burned in a controlled manner to replace the gold with silver, thus achieving the effect of purification.

The reason Zhou Jingming mentioned mercury refining was not to purify the gold, but to use the properties of mercury to separate the fine gold particles that could not be separated from the black sand.

Peng Yuanchao probably felt that mercury would be wasted once it vaporized, and mercury was not cheap and was also highly toxic, so he didn't want to deal with it.

But Zhou Jingming knew that Yao Jin's mercury could be recycled, and he even knew how to refine mercury himself, so he didn't need to buy it.

For him, it was a piece of cake.

He had been panning for gold for many years and knew a lot of techniques, but he felt there was no need to reveal too much to these people.

He thought for a moment, then continued, following Peng Yuanchao's words: "It is indeed quite costly and troublesome... Keep it for me, and I'll take it out to try it out when I come out of the mountains."

That's exactly what he was waiting for Peng Yuanchao to say.

Peng Yuanchao said nonchalantly, "Alright, I'll keep it for you. They won't have any objections. Anyway, I can't pick any more out... You don't have any objections to giving the remaining fine sand to Brother Zhou, do you?"

Zhou Jingming didn't hide these words from others when he spoke to Peng Yuanchao. Each day at the end of the workday, it was the team leader's job to pick out the gold from the refined sand.

Based on what Zhou Jingming learned from his previous life panning for gold in Altay, most gold panning team leaders would collect the larger gold nuggets first, and try to extract the remaining gold dust by licking their lips. Those that they couldn't distinguish would usually be thrown away.

There are actually very fine specks of gold mixed in.

These individual gold particles that exist in nature are so small that they cannot be detected even with saliva, and some can only be seen with a magnifying glass. When mixed with residual black sand powder, they become even more indistinguishable.

While the method of using mercury to extract gold cannot produce all of it, it can extract most of it. This is something that many gold tycoons would do, because the daily gold production is considerable, which means that a considerable amount of refined sand is collected. They are willing and it is worthwhile for them to do this.

For Zhou Jingming, mercury can be recycled and reused. Although the amount of refined sand produced each day is not large, it is still worthwhile in the long run.

Many of these gold prospectors who came to Altay were illiterate "roughnecks" who lacked access to information. They didn't know much, were too lazy to do delicate work, and cared more about the gold they could see and touch. They usually didn't care much about the tiny, hard-to-sort gold dust.

But as you pan for gold for a long time, you'll inevitably hear about things related to gold panning and refining, and you'll become increasingly shrewd.

The reason Zhou Jingming chose to talk about this in front of everyone was that he guessed the people in the team were unwilling to go through all that trouble, so he deliberately made his point "openly".

Since Peng Yuanchao doesn't care about those insignificant things, he might as well keep them for himself. Over time, they will accumulate and eventually, when he leaves the mountain, he can extract the fine gold from the sand, which will surely be a considerable extra income.

He said that he was doing this openly to avoid speculation about his future collection of those fine sands.

Now, when Peng Yuanchao asked if anyone had any objections, several newcomers immediately nodded to indicate that they had no objections, but only Cao Qidong asked in detail.

Peng Yuanchao then explained the method of refining gold using mercury, mainly emphasizing that the remaining refined sand contained very little gold, mercury was not cheap, and that when it was burned, the mercury would evaporate into a highly toxic gas, which would cause poisoning if inhaled, so he said there was no need to go through all that trouble.

Cao Qidong then indicated that he had no objections.

While saying these words, Zhou Jingming paid special attention to Cao Qidong.

In his understanding, Luoyue was one of the places where many people came out to seek their fortune, especially Shanglin in Luoyue.

Many people in Shanglin made their fortunes by panning for gold. Over the years, while many villages in Shanglin appeared to be impoverished and struggling to survive, there were also many wealthy people hidden among them, creating a stark contrast. Furthermore, many Luo Yue people made their fortunes internationally by panning for gold.

In the international gold rush world, the people of Shanglin were renowned for their gold panning.

Cao Qidong asked very detailed questions, which was completely different from the reactions of others who were just curious and didn't care much about mercury alchemy because they heard that mercury was not cheap and was highly poisonous.

This alone is enough to warrant our attention.

So, Zhou Jingming asked himself again: Is Cao Qidong really a gold rush novice? He's far more shrewd than other novices.

In addition, there were people from Luoyue in the group, so he naturally thought of Wu Fusheng, a person from Luoyue who had tried to take advantage of him in Chengdu, and he had always had some ideas about him.

However, those ideas are not yet mature, and there are some things that are not easy for him to do right now, so he cannot show them too early.

Since everyone agreed that he should keep the fine sand, things became much easier.

Zhou Jingming asked Peng Yuanchao where he dumped the refined sand, wanting to collect it, but learned that it was simply rinsed with water and splashed away, so he had to give up and thought he would collect it another day.

(End of this chapter)