I'm Rich!
Saturday, March 10, 2007
WOW! What’s the biggest amount of money you’ve ever held at once?
When I was a kid I had a paper route. I got it when I was twelve. Before that the most money I had ever held was about $20. Once I had the route, however, I repeatedly held onto sums in the hundreds. What a feeling; to just stand there staring at all that money. My mind would always wander off on the many things I could do with that cash. In the end it would inevitably just disappear.
Yesterday, the school took a field trip to the main plant. All nineteen of us piled into two cars and headed off for the boardroom. Once there we were outfitted with hard hats and safety glasses. We were escorted by Terry, the acting GM, and the chief metallurgist, Gerrie. They walked us through the entire process with plenty of hands on experiences to help out.
First stop was the tip wall. There we watched giant 777 dump trucks dumping their hundred ton payload into an enormous hopper. The rocks tumbled onto a conveyor and headed off for the mill.
The mill is three big steel drums, lying horizontally next to each other. They are loaded with steel shot balls the size of baseballs. The material enters as rock and exits as sand. The conveyor takes it off to the cyanide leach tanks.
The sand starts at the top of a series of about eight tanks and works its way down. In the meantime, the cyanide solution starts from the bottom and works its way up. The gold is attracted to the cyanide. It is literally pulled out of the sand to bond with the cyanide. After thirty hours, the liquid concentrate is moved to the carbon tanks.
Once again the sand starts at the top while the carbon moves up from the bottom. The carbon grabs the gold from the cyanide and holds onto it. After thirty hours in these tanks, the dry grit is removed and moved onto electrolysis.
They run the carbon concoction through giant batteries. The gold is attracted to the cathode. It is drawn out of the carbon to cling onto the cathode tube. This is removed, and the sand is collected.
This sand is now 40% gold. It gets poured into a 1200 degree Celsius oven where it cooks for three hours. When the time comes, it gets poured out of the kiln into a ceramic coated mold. The mold has a pour spout at the top. This empties into another mold, which in turn pours into three more and a waste pan at the bottom. The heat turns the sand to glass. The gold is heavier than the molten glass so it sinks. When the kiln is emptied, the glass pours out first. When the gold gets there, it fills the mold and displaces the glass into the next one down. In the end there are three gold bars, two glass bars, and a little waste in the pan.
The bars cool for a minute before they are taken out of the mold. They are allowed to cool a bit longer before they are placed in a water bath. During the bath, the bar is hit with a needle gun, a hammer, and high pressure water. This removes any glass clinging to the outside and cools the bar. It gets weighed and stamped and loaded into the vault.
They placed one on a table so everyone could touch it. They took our pictures while we held it, helping the younger ones hold it up. It weighed 25 kilograms; that’s about 55 pounds. The price of gold that day was $650 an ounce. That bar of gold was worth $572,000. Holy crap! The things I could do with $572,000. Of course that would mean I would have to carry it somewhere and that would have been impossible.
WOW! What’s the biggest amount of money you’ve ever held at once?
When I was a kid I had a paper route. I got it when I was twelve. Before that the most money I had ever held was about $20. Once I had the route, however, I repeatedly held onto sums in the hundreds. What a feeling; to just stand there staring at all that money. My mind would always wander off on the many things I could do with that cash. In the end it would inevitably just disappear.
Yesterday, the school took a field trip to the main plant. All nineteen of us piled into two cars and headed off for the boardroom. Once there we were outfitted with hard hats and safety glasses. We were escorted by Terry, the acting GM, and the chief metallurgist, Gerrie. They walked us through the entire process with plenty of hands on experiences to help out.
First stop was the tip wall. There we watched giant 777 dump trucks dumping their hundred ton payload into an enormous hopper. The rocks tumbled onto a conveyor and headed off for the mill.The mill is three big steel drums, lying horizontally next to each other. They are loaded with steel shot balls the size of baseballs. The material enters as rock and exits as sand. The conveyor takes it off to the cyanide leach tanks.
The sand starts at the top of a series of about eight tanks and works its way down. In the meantime, the cyanide solution starts from the bottom and works its way up. The gold is attracted to the cyanide. It is literally pulled out of the sand to bond with the cyanide. After thirty hours, the liquid concentrate is moved to the carbon tanks.
Once again the sand starts at the top while the carbon moves up from the bottom. The carbon grabs the gold from the cyanide and holds onto it. After thirty hours in these tanks, the dry grit is removed and moved onto electrolysis.
They run the carbon concoction through giant batteries. The gold is attracted to the cathode. It is drawn out of the carbon to cling onto the cathode tube. This is removed, and the sand is collected.
This sand is now 40% gold. It gets poured into a 1200 degree Celsius oven where it cooks for three hours. When the time comes, it gets poured out of the kiln into a ceramic coated mold. The mold has a pour spout at the top. This empties into another mold, which in turn pours into three more and a waste pan at the bottom. The heat turns the sand to glass. The gold is heavier than the molten glass so it sinks. When the kiln is emptied, the glass pours out first. When the gold gets there, it fills the mold and displaces the glass into the next one down. In the end there are three gold bars, two glass bars, and a little waste in the pan.
The bars cool for a minute before they are taken out of the mold. They are allowed to cool a bit longer before they are placed in a water bath. During the bath, the bar is hit with a needle gun, a hammer, and high pressure water. This removes any glass clinging to the outside and cools the bar. It gets weighed and stamped and loaded into the vault.They placed one on a table so everyone could touch it. They took our pictures while we held it, helping the younger ones hold it up. It weighed 25 kilograms; that’s about 55 pounds. The price of gold that day was $650 an ounce. That bar of gold was worth $572,000. Holy crap! The things I could do with $572,000. Of course that would mean I would have to carry it somewhere and that would have been impossible.
What a day! Man, that is definitely one for the history books.
MJR
MJR
posted by Bronx to Timbuktu at 8:44 AM
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