BBX (ASX) Evidence based speculation

Originally posted by eshmun ↑

But the rock is also getting fed into the smelt from what they are saying. So that’s tonnes of silicate rock which presumably also needs to be melted (at 1750 degrees) to extract the gold which by previous announcements seems to exist in some strange ionic form at levels which are likely to be at sub-2 micron scale (ie defined by the width of the beam of the scanning electron microscope).

Can you explain why regular smelting of gold needs the gold to be concentrated to 20oz/t but here they are just piling in unconcentarted material? Can you also explain why in previous schemes they used nitric acid alone to dissolve the gold whereas it is commonly known that only a combination of nitric acid and hydrochloric acid can dissolve and precipitate out gold, neither acid can do it by itself?

I am not a metallurgist but every time I look to metallurgical sources I find a contradiction somewhere.

Do you really think it should be up to investors to try and calculate the energy consumed to smelt the gold. Why aren’t some of these basic facts being told to investors, even simple stuff like how abrasive the rock is to grind. Stuff most other metallurgical studies tend to deliver in spades?

I’m glad you are seeing it because I’m not. Esh

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I think you are worrying yourself too much Esh . To make a tonne of pig iron from magnetite (Fe3o4) it requires a couple of tonne of magnetite guessing two tonnes is worth $120 US which includes guessing 30% SiO2 and an electric arc furnace ,( pig iron melts at around 1500 C )
Anyway it all gets melted up, the magnetite beneath the SiO2 slag reduces to pig iron that sells for about US$250 a tonne
So the electric cost would be less than $250- 125 = $130 a tonne and that is a very liberal figure assuming there was no profit , labor , CAPEX expenses so lets say $100 a tonne in energy costs .
There are plenty of production refractory smelters in Nevada , that treat the refractory gold from gold mills there so I doubt if this is an unsermountable hurdle .

Evidence based speculation, page-34