All elements in nature can be found in seawater. Among these elements, iron, lead but also … but gold !
The extremely rich seawater
Six major ions make up more than 99% of salts dissolved in seawater.
- Sodium (Na +)
- Chloride (Cl-)
- Sulphate (SO42)
- Magnesium (Mg2 +)
- Calcium (Ca2 +)
- Potassium (K +).
But among all this composition, it is possible to find gold ions. We could find in small part in sea water at 0.005 parts per billion, an average rate of 0.05 grams per 1000 liters of water.
Extract gold from the ocean floor ?
If we extracted all the gold present in seawater as ions, the fabulous amount would be reached with …
10,000 million tons !
Unfortunately, gold is so dissolved that none extraction process has yet profitable. Somes search the way to extract the salt water in manufacturing kinds of “electrically conductive” combs to filter water. This inexpensive process powered by solar cells gradually retain gold on a myriad of teeth. Huge rakes could be built to recover kilos of gold each day, but only by pumping thousands and thousands of tons of seawater.
It can also find gold in ocean floor in non-dissolved form. However, cross some oceans lying about 2 km deep, yet the difficulty lies in the fact that gold would be covered in encased and solid marine rocks to be crushed. Not so easy …
If we could extract all the gold of the oceans, there would be enough precious metal for every person on earth could possess about …
453 grams of fine gold
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