Panning with alcohol?

[mr.bean]

This is my first time posting on Treasurenet, so go easy on me! I just remembered that alcohol has a lower specific gravity (.8190) than water. This caused me to wonder if panning with 91% isopropyl alcohol would aid in the ability to pan easier and recover more gold. The additional plus is that the alcohol could eliminate any trace amounts of oil.

Perhaps this a just wacky gold fever induced idea but what are your thoughts on the effectiveness?

Thanks for viewing, heavy pans!

 

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[russau]

well one good thing about using alcohol in your panning....................if you don't find any gold you can always drink the alcohol from your pan and wont need to bring a cup! maybe that's why I sleep soooooooooooooo good when out dredgeing??

 

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[DizzyDigger]

I'm afraid panning with high-octane ISO wouldn't be a viable option
for me under any circumstances. First time I lit a cigarette.........
.............well, it would be...bad.

Just make sure there's a good breeze blowing the fumes away....

 

[GoldpannerDave]

I knew all that, I just must not have stated it clearly - I was just using randomly assigned numbers to illustrate the math, and I misused the term weight instead of SG.



My quick internet research shows that for most of us recreational prospectors, sugar water is your best bet - fully saturated, you can get a specific gravity around 1.4 g/cm3. There are a ton of other chemical options for "heavy fluids", but due to cost/health hazards, not really practical for hobby prospecting. And the jet dry/surface tension is a whole other bucket of physics worms

Yes, you can get a more dense solution with sugar. That is why regular Coke weighs so much more than Diet Coke. I think salt is about 1.2 g/cm3 for a saturated solution. But I was thinking price. Last year when we were buying sugar for feeding the 30-40 hummingbirds we had, it ran about $6 for 10 pounds. You could buy rock salt for about $1 for 2 pounds; cheaper in larger sizes. It may not be all that much cheaper, but I was focused more on costs than the density of the saturated solution. Good call, if money is no object, you could pan with saturated sugar solution.

If you had clean cons, you could pan into a catch pan/basin and recycle the sugar solution, so cost differential would be small.

Of course, the hummingbirds might be a problem, along with the bees and yellow jackets.

 

[arizau]

Yes, you can get a more dense solution with sugar. That is why regular Coke weighs so much more than Diet Coke. I think salt is about 1.2 g/cm3 for a saturated solution. But I was thinking price. Last year when we were buying sugar for feeding the 30-40 hummingbirds we had, it ran about $6 for 10 pounds. You could buy rock salt for about $1 for 2 pounds; cheaper in larger sizes. It may not be all that much cheaper, but I was focused more on costs than the density of the saturated solution. Good call, if money is no object, you could pan with saturated sugar solution.

If you had clean cons, you could pan into a catch pan/basin and recycle the sugar solution, so cost differential would be small.

Of course, the hummingbirds might be a problem, along with the bees and yellow jackets.

View attachment 1157345

For an entertaining story and discussion about using sugar water for panning open the link here for Frenchy's secret gold panning method posted on the GPEX Forum. https://www.google.com/search?q=fre...=UTF-8#q=frenchy's+secret+gold+panning+method

PS: It is easier to read if you go to the GPEX gold forum and do a search and if you are not already aware GPEX is another great gold forum.

 

[Rob in KS]

Alchohol's fer drinkin
Gasoline's fer cleaning parts
Nitromethane's fer racing

 

[benny]

You guys need to pay attention to viscosity if you're going to be panning. Honest! Alcohol has a SG of about .8. Molasses, on the other hand (essentially sugar water) has a SG of about 1.4. Try dumping some of your concentrates in molasses, and the gold will hit the bottom first, but you may have to wait a while before that happens. Anyway, dump concentrates in alcohol and both will hit the bottom at about the same time, but remember, you're panning. The alcohol viscosity will have very little "push" when swirling the pan and so it'll be harder to move both the sand and the gold. Should be OK for fine cleanup. Try swirling molasses in a pan, and everything will be picked up and moved.

Anyway, the compound I found with the highest SG that might work would be sulfuric acid (SG 1.84), and it's probably going to eventually dissolve everything but the gold.

Specific gravities for common fluids and liquids
Liquids and Fluids - Specific Gravities - SG

Viscosity
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viscosity

 

[GoldpannerDave]

You guys need to pay attention to viscosity if you're going to be panning. Honest! Alcohol has a SG of about .8. Molasses, on the other hand (essentially sugar water) has a SG of about 1.4. Try dumping some of your concentrates in molasses, and the gold will hit the bottom first, but you may have to wait a while before that happens. Anyway, dump concentrates in alcohol and both will hit the bottom at about the same time, but remember, you're panning. The alcohol viscosity will have very little "push" when swirling the pan and so it'll be harder to move both the sand and the gold. Should be OK for fine cleanup. Try swirling molasses in a pan, and everything will be picked up and moved.

Anyway, the compound I found with the highest SG that might work would be sulfuric acid (SG 1.84), and it's probably going to eventually dissolve everything but the gold.

Specific gravities for common fluids and liquids
Liquids and Fluids - Specific Gravities - SG

Viscosity
Viscosity - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Yes, but conc sulfuric acid is not something most people want to play around with, left alone pan with. That is the same stuff in your car battery (assuming you have a standard lead-acid battery). Perhaps you meant to add an but I did not see one.

So were you pulling our leg?