WEALTH IN THE SEA

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXIV, Issue 3192, 19 August 1930, Page 3

WEALTH IN THE SEA

GOLD FROM ITS WATERS. A PATENTED PROCESS. San Fi-ancisco, July 23 Five tons of water from the Pacific produces gold worth a penny. This is the basis of a new industry. A sample of the Pacific’s gold, obtained by two Berlin mining engineers, has been sent to the Smithsonian Institute for record. One of them, Herschel Parker, who is a Fellow of the Royal Society and expresident of the Explorers’ Club of New York, says the new process, has been patented. The water is piped info a tank, in the bottom of which is a quantity of iron ochre or red oxide of iron. This ochre, which is mined in large quantities, attracts gold to itself. “When the ochre is rich enough in captured gold,” Mr. Pai'ker says, “we put it through an ordinary chlorination or cyanide process to extract the gold. Then we reclaim our chemicals and repeat the process. An agitator at the bottom of the tank keeps the water constantly feeding gold to the ochre. “Since the earliest mining days prospectors often have gazed yearningly at the sea. Minute quantities of valuable metals are washed down to it by rivers running over masses of primary eruptive rock. The Forty-niners panned the river sands, knowing of the vast wealth that must be pouring annually into the sea. Our process does not touch the sea sands, but the sea itself—the gold held imprisoned in the water. And we believe we have reached a point where we can expand and go after sea gold on a larger scale.”