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20 results for “Cyanide leaching”
Industry · 7 August 2026
After the Cyanide
…ast shift is the part of the industry with the longest timeline and the least coverage. · Cyanide is used because it is the only reagent that dissolves gold selectively at industrial scale and low cost; the risk lies in handling and storage, not in the chemistry being exotic. · F…
Tomas Herrera · 17 min read
Mining · 22 May 2026
The Other Supply Chain: Artisanal Mining and the Mercury Problem
…l or literacy in chemistry. · Alternatives exist — gravity concentration, borax smelting, cyanide in controlled plants — but each shifts risk rather than eliminating it. · Traceability schemes work only where miners can actually access a legal buyer at a fair price. · What is art…
Amara Okonjo · 12 min read
Mining · 5 August 2026
Grade, Cut-off and the Arithmetic of an Open Pit
…· Recovery: the ounces you do not get · Milling does not extract everything. Conventional cyanide leaching with carbon adsorption recovers something like 88 to 94 percent of contained gold from amenable ore. The remainder — locked in sulphide minerals, adsorbed onto carbonaceous…
Amara Okonjo · 16 min read
Science · 9 August 2026
The Metallurgy of Karat
…what produces the pink cast. 18k palladium white: 75% gold with palladium as the primary bleaching agent, giving a grey-white alloy that is expensive but skin-friendly. 9k yellow: 37.5% gold, with the remaining 62.5% dominated by copper and silver — harder, paler, and far more pr…
Tomas Herrera · 16 min read
Industry · 28 July 2026
Urban Mining: The Richest Gold Ore on Earth Is in Your Old Phone
…electronics at home? You should not attempt it. The established routes use strong acids, cyanide or high-temperature smelting, and the informal versions of these processes are responsible for severe heavy-metal and dioxin exposure in communities where they are practised. This ar…
Tomas Herrera · 13 min read
Markets · 20 June 2026
Bring It Home: Central Banks and the Great Gold Repatriation
For half a century it was rational to store your gold in someone else's basement. Then the calculus of counterparty risk changed, and reserve managers started chartering aircraft. · Overseas custody w…
Ingrid Sørensen · 13 min read
Craft · 22 July 2026
Hallmarks and Assay: How Anyone Proves Gold Is Gold
A hallmark is one of the oldest consumer protection technologies in continuous use. It is also, on close inspection, a small masterpiece of institutional design — and it is being quietly eroded. · A h…
Yusuf Demir · 12 min read
Industry · 7 August 2026
How Fake Gold Is Detected
Counterfeiting gold is not about making something that looks right. It is about defeating a specific test, and the industry's defences are an escalating conversation between forgers and instruments. ·…
Tomas Herrera · 15 min read
Markets · 8 August 2026
Moving Bullion: The Logistics Nobody Prices
Between the vault and the buyer sits an industry of armoured vehicles, sealed cargo, bonded warehouses and insurance clauses. It rarely makes news, and it is the reason a spot price in London can dive…
Ingrid Sørensen · 17 min read
Industry · 2 July 2026
Nine Nines: Inside a Modern Gold Refinery
A doré bar arrives at 85 per cent purity and leaves at 99.99. Between those two numbers sit chlorine gas, aqua regia, an electrolytic cell and a chain of custody that is now as valuable as the metal i…
Tomas Herrera · 12 min read
Craft · 5 June 2026
The Alchemy of Craft: What Goldsmiths Know That Machines Don't
Gold's working properties are so extreme they border on the absurd — one gram drawn into three kilometres of wire. Inside a trade where the tools have barely changed and the hands are irreplaceable. ·…
Yusuf Demir · 11 min read
Industry · 4 August 2026
The Gold Inside Your Phone
Industrial demand is the quietest third of the gold market: a few tenths of a gram per handset, multiplied by billions of devices, chosen not for prestige but because nothing else conducts as reliably…
Tomas Herrera · 15 min read
History · 14 July 2026
The Gold Standard: How a Soft Yellow Metal Became Money
For roughly five thousand years, humanity kept returning to the same element to settle its debts. The story is less about greed than about the unusually boring chemistry of atomic number 79. · Gold's…
Marguerite Adler · 14 min read
History · 9 August 2026
The Hoard Problem: What Buried Gold Actually Tells Us
A field of gold torcs and coins is a spectacular find and a treacherous document. The people who buried it were not writing to us, and the reasons they had for putting it in the ground are exactly wha…
Marguerite Adler · 16 min read
Science · 8 August 2026
The Metal That Went Medical
Divide gold finely enough and it stops being gold-coloured, stops being inert in the way you expect, and starts doing work in places no bullion bar could reach — including the test strip that told you…
Amara Okonjo · 15 min read
Industry · 6 August 2026
The Scrap Trade
Roughly a quarter of the world's annual gold supply has been gold before. It arrives as broken chains, single earrings and dental crowns, and it moves through a chain of intermediaries that most selle…
Ingrid Sørensen · 15 min read
Craft · 3 August 2026
The Wedding-Season Bid: How Jewellery Demand Sets the Floor
Half the world's gold is worn, not stored. In India and China that distinction barely exists — and the buying behaviour it produces is the most reliably contrarian force in the entire market. · Jewell…
Yusuf Demir · 16 min read
Science · 10 August 2026
Where Gold Actually Comes From
Every gram of gold on Earth was manufactured in an astrophysical catastrophe, arrived here after the planet had already formed, and was then concentrated by hot water. Three separate accidents, none o…
Tomas Herrera · 18 min read
Markets · 2 August 2026
Who Actually Sets the Gold Price
There is no single gold price. There is a London settlement number, a New York futures curve, a Shanghai premium and a jeweller's counter in Dubai — and the distance between them is where the market l…
Ingrid Sørensen · 15 min read
Markets · 6 August 2026
Why Central Banks Started Buying Gold Again
For three decades official institutions were net sellers of bullion, and the policy consensus treated the metal as a museum piece. Then, quietly, the world's reserve managers reversed. The reasons are…
Ingrid Sørensen · 17 min read
