THE CYANIDE PROCESS.

Patea Mail, Volume VIII, Issue 121, 9 October 1895, Page 3

THE CYANIDE PROCESS.

What ths cyanide process consists of is not generally known, says the NapioTelegraph, and a few details in connection with it will doubtless prove of interest to a large number of our readers. Seven years ago the patentees discovered how to get gold out of the matrix into the cyanide solution, but they hud not discovered how to economically collect the glod by the use of zinc in a thread-like condition and at once the invention meant Jbig fortunes for the patentees. Already £2 000,000 worth of gold has been won by it. And now to shortly describe what the invention consists of. First the ore is crushed, as in the usual methods. Then it is subjected to the action of a weak solution of ordinary cyanide of patassium (usually one part to a hundred and ninety nine parts of water), which percolates through the mass of crushed ore and dissolves out tho gold in it. A large proportion of the gold is saved—in some cases 90 per cent —in- the solution. This is filtered off in the form of potassic-anro-cyanide, to give itifa technical name, end the gold is then chemica’ly piecipitated and melted into bullion. There are details in the operation which require that skilled men should perform it, but briefly the process is as we describe it. Should this process be even half as good as stated there are literally thousands of ounces of gold to be won from tho old working at Okarito, The Five Mile and Gillespie’s on the West of the other Island.