The process of gold mining dates back to the Roman Period and since then, there have been many methods by which it is done. Each technique follows a very intricate process and different mining companies around the world settle for the method that they believe will be most beneficial to their business. Here are some of those methods:
a. Placer Mining
• Gold Panning – this is the method of manually sorting gold out using a shallow pan. This is effective because gold tends to settle beneath everything else.
• Metal Detecting – this is done, of course, with the… Continue reading

The main type of gold extraction today is hard rock mining using either open pit methods or sub-surface mines. Mining gold from water was a method that was widely used during the California gold rush but is not commercially viable today and is used mainly by artisan gold miners.

Gold Mining: Panning

The original method of mining gold from water was known as panning and is a manual technique to sort gold from gravel and sediments present in a stream. The pan is filled with material from the stream bed and then submerged underwater and shaken. As gold… Continue reading

Producing pure gold results in a very high environmental burden due to the physical mining and extraction processes used to extract the pure metal. Whether gold is obtained from base ore which requires a mining operation (and tons of gold ore are required to produce one gram of pure gold) or by extracting gold metal from rivers and streams, the environmental impact is simply enormous. Continue reading