White powder in black sand?

[Astrobouncer]

So today I have been panning out the concentrate from the sluice at my newest spot and I noticed there is some kind of white powder/ white particles down there in the bottom with the heavy stuff. Anyone know what this could be? I looked for information on google on this but came up with just a lot of stuff about beaches, heh.

 

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[chadrack]

In some areas I prospect your post would describe the zircon I find.

 

[strickman]

load some pics,maybe a couple off different things

 

[beaks]

sounds like some of the lead i get in my works.

 

[patches63]

in early ninetys, i had the opportunity to dredge out a small creek just below an old 20 stamp mill.the mine was very rich,worked for 30 years or so.i removed lbs of chunky mercury,lbs of copper bits,lead, and lots ofARSENIC. some of this was in crystaline form, but there was also alot of powdery,flaky whitish looking arsenic fines.arsenic was a major by product of the type of ore that this mine was crushing.very toxic.

 

[Astrobouncer]

Thanks for all the replies guys, tomorrow when I am out of college for the weekend (and finally have a couple hours free time) I will try to get some pics up. I have all the black sand concentrate from there saved in a 5lb bucket. Possible arsenic or lead, ouch. This is a couple miles upstream from an old small mine from 1908 that basically worked one quartz vein so I dont know how that could have contaminated this ground, unless it was something else. This whole area has many old historic mills and alot of history on the river, so I guess it could be from one of those. One weird thing about this river is I am not finding any worms or crawdads like I usually see in other rivers I have worked, though I did see some minnows.

I also didnt find much color at all, I suspect its there, but I just didnt dig in the right spot yet. Everything is so overgrown I was unable to locate any old stream banks and the places along the bank I did dig, there was so much gravel I think I didnt dig deep enough (water kept overflowing my holes). Following a tip from a guy I met who lives next to this river I am gonna hike a mile upstream (this weekend) to a place where he says the old times used to pan (in early 1900s) and where he says there are huge black rocks (and hopefully some bedrock).

Will keep you guys posted.

 

[Astrobouncer]

So today I finally got some pics of the black sand with the white/gray sand in it.

The weird thing about this sand is the gray/whitish stuff sits underneath underneath the black sand and I guess I am not experienced enough to separate them well. I have a real hard time getting them apart to take good pics. It looks more grayish in these pictures because the black sand was mixed in with the lighter stuff but in the second linked picture you can really make out how light that material is.

I never did get to hike upstream yet at the place I mentioned, because of college work this week and last, but after my test tomorrow hopefully I will have some free time this week coming up to check it out.

The pictures aren't the best, but hopefully you can make out enough detail. I use a 4.0 mega pixel digital camera which is a couple years old.

Left click on the pictures to enlarge and zoom in, there's a couple more pics at the image shack site too, though some are blurry.

 

[ChuckNC]

What area are you working? That would give a better idea of what you've run into. I've actually found a small amount of Pt in the Charlotte area, but that was the only spot in the area I've found Pt.

Chuck

 

[Astrobouncer]

I sent you a pm saying where exactly.

I was working that area today with the sluice and I noticed some more of that white stuff backing up behind the riffles.

I dont have any free mercury atm, so I cant test it with that. If it was floured mercury wouldnt it evaporate when the concentrate dries in the hot sun?

 

[patches63]

floured mercury can look and behave like that.a simple test would be take a couple tablespoons of that grayish stuff, clean it up with lye,avoid the fumes, outdoors. then put some clean shiny mercury in, does it pick it up? whatever it is, it seems to have a high specific gravity.or maybe you could seperate it with a blue bowl.

 

[beaks]

I hate to be the one to say this but i have to.

dont post exact locations unless you want everyone on the net climbing all over you to see what they can dig up.

when money is in the mix most people dont care if its on private property or not and they will walk up the river from the public access roads and dig you out of house and home.

test your cons and file a claim if possible before someone else does.

 

[patches63]

when mercury, old or new, becomes comtaminated by acidic water, alkiline water, arsinic, or any numder of things, it flours, that is to say, in breaks into millions of tiny beads. and wont adhere to itself, thus you have a bunch of crap. depending on the amount of crap you have to deal with, do one of the follwing.take a electric cement mixer, with a non metal barrel, put iyour crap, lye,thats sodium hydroxide, let it run overnight. rinse, no chlorine. chlorine inhibits amalgamation. then add freshly charged mercury. hope you have screened the material at this point. the clean merc. will pick up the old cleaned merc at this point.use a syringe, w/ctton ball at bottom.push merc. thru cotton into pan full of h2o burn cotton w/ amalgam with nitric. pm me if unsure of this. stay UPWIND.

 

[ChuckNC]

Beaks,
You're right about not posting exact areas. I was just wanting to know the general area being worked. That would be enough information to share generalities or expand someones knowledge of an area. 8)

I guess I've been lucky not to have run into mercury, so I didn't think of it. If the material is mercury coated, I'd try to build or buy a retort. That way the mercury can be safely recovered and then used or disposed of properly.

Another way to go would to be washing the material with dilute nitric acid. Here's a good site for dealing with merc.
http://webpages.charter.net/kwilliams00/bcftp/bcftp.htm

Ken's been gone for several years now. Blast it I miss our discussions.

Chuck

 

[beaks]

it looks like it could be mercury amalgam.

just take a small sample and cook it on a steel plate over an open fire outside, (stay upwind)

if it melts then its lead if it changes color (brown or black) then its probably gold/gold alloy (you would have to test it with nitric to find out for sure)

you need to test so you can be sure what you are getting because if thats amalgam then from the looks of that pan you have a nice spot.

 

[enamel7]

I agree with the zircon guess. Have some of it north of Charlotte. Under magnification it is clear and oval, not angular.

 

[aussco999]

Hey Astro;

Take your cons in to a dark room (or at night) and put a shortwave black light on them. If you see any fluorescent colors (white, blue, red, yellow, green, etc) , then you might have scheelite (s.g. 6), huebnerite (s.g. 7), or one of the other minerals in the wolframite series. All of these minerals are commonly found on beaches, and their heavy specific gravity will cause them to hang with the black sands (s.g. 5).

Good luck,

John

 

[Eu_citzen]

Is it magnetic? Something I found that looks similar to it was magnetic and easily to dismiss.

If not check it out more closely.

 

[Astrobouncer]

Thanks for all the replies.

I do not have any free mercury to test it with to see if it merges with it. I could build a retort to try and cook the mercury out, but honestly I am kinda scared to handle mercury. I might ask one of my college professors about doing this maybe in the lab or something.

It is not magnetic. I tested that just now.

I dont have a microscope. Maybe I can take a sample to my college's chemistry lab?

I don't have a shortwave uv light, though I do have a longwave one. I just checked the black sand out using that, and I do see some hot-pink and red colors mixed in with the black sand.

Here is two pictures, of the sand under the longwave blacklight, its kinda hard to make out what is what, because I am using a clear plastic container to put up against the black light (and there are reflections). So the third picture is showing the black sand in the container with the lights on. The arrows show the pink-red flurescent glow streaks in the sand, its hard to see under the picture but there is a lot of it. Thats only a small sample of all the black sand concentrate I got from this spot too.

Edit: Ignore the white glow, its just reflections of paper in the plastic.