From: "Tom Milam, Jr." <milam@ionet.net>
Subject: Re: Using plasma to refine gold
Reply-to: milam@ionet.net
Organization: SBC Internet Services
Newsgroups: sci.physics.plasma
References: <961hdi$apj2$1@saturn.cs.uml.edu> <969hla$4eia$1@saturn.cs.uml.edu>



Dear Paul:

I am very interested in contacting you. I will be out of the country for
the next couple of weeks. I am traveling to Honduras, we are starting up a
small mining operation there.

I wish the price of gold would come up a bit.

Feel free to contact me for additional information. I will contact you upon
my return. Please wish me luck.

/s/ Tom Milam, Jr.

> -----
> > Tom Milam, Jr.
> > The Inglesrud Corporation
> > P. O. Box 18759
> > Oklahoma City, OK 73154
> > Telephone: (405) 843-7389
> > Facsimile: (405) 843-0351
> > Internet: milam@ionet.net
> > Hard rock mining - Honduras
> > Web Page: www.inglesrud.com
> > -----

--






Nina & Paul wrote:

> Hi Tom,
>
> I have know idea if what I've done is of any interest to you, or even
> answers you question. So if I'm simply babbling here, forgive me.
>
> But in the event it's something of interest and it can help you here
> goes and please feel free to get in touch.
>
> I've had al kinds of success using home made (made in our R&D fab shop),
> electric arc plasma torches.
>
> I wanted to attempt to produce precious metals from the bottom ash from
> coal fired powerplants, simply as an intelectual curiosity I had.
>
> A number of years ago when I was in Poland on looking at devising a
> solution for that countries cronic problem with leatchates from billions
> of tons of coal tailings from their coal fired powerplants.
>
> At that time I was exposed to the concept one of their country's
> brillant chemists referred to as "electron splicing".
>
> I'm not a chemist, nor do I have any professional or academic background
> in physics or any of the sciences. I operate 100% from extrapolating
> things and have an uncanny ability to marry concepts across dicsiplines.
> So if we get into a diologue please don't get too technical on me.
>
> All I can tell you is, that once I had the chance to play with some of
> my theories, electron splicing is a piece of cake. You could preety well
> "create" just about anything you wanted. Like Captian Pacard on Star
> Trek. Computer! Earl Gray Tea please.... right out of the periodic table
> of elements. We haven't made any tea, or cup or saucer, but what we have
> made convinces me that it's possible once the processers are capable of
> making the selection from the elements and knowing what one to use as
> the host and from which others to tranfer the electrons from.
>
> To recover or create precious metals from incinerator ash really isn't a
> big leap. Coal burned leaves behind higiher grade carbon we found to be
> above C14. This really became a nice carrier for the other electrons we
> build with.
>
> You may have heard that last Saturday, some Italian metallurgy
> scientists, announced to the media with great fan fair, that they had
> made gold in their lab from some undisclosed dust!
>
> They were hoping(?) (what's to hope for, it's as easy as making bronze),
> to commercialize their process by 2005. Their biggest hurdle will be all
> of the major corporations holding billions of their companies dollars in
> gold certificates that will go into the toilet if gold becomes as comon
> place as tin.
>
> Most people don't know this, but I heard that Nazi physicist were making
> "K" gold, which is for lack of a better term, artificial gold, that had
> no detectable differences from "real" gold, way back in the 30's. And
> this was how they financed their insanity. When Berlin fell to the
> Russian's the western allies were concerned they'd get the formula for
> making gold. Well they probably did but got even smarter for not dumping
> gold and went into metal production of really valuable industrial,
> arospace alloys way faster then the US metallurical guys which was what
> gave them the space advantage.
>
> Also Russian physicist have been "making" palladium for more then 30 or
> so years. When I was in Poland i met guys who had worked in the precious
> metal plants as chemists back when Russia ruled the East Block nations.
> These guys said there wasn't one ounce of ore ever used in any of their
> metallurgical refinment processes. when I asked how they did it, they
> would make vage refrences to electron splicing or 'doping" technolies
> they'd developed using high energy physics processes.
>
> Most people in North America have no idea that Russian palladium brokers
> supply North American auto makers with 90% of all the palladium they use
> in the catalytic converts in their exhaust systems. Yet russia has very
> little palladium ore deposits. Actuall last year the NA auto industry
> used more palladium then all of the known ore reserves in the WORLD with
> even greater demands yet to come right out of NA, yet the price
> Russian's are getting from NA for a man made metal is well over $800 an
> ounce.
>
> When people realize any of these metals, in fact EVERY metal we as a
> planet will ever require can be easily produced, as easy as making any
> flavor of cake ones heart craves!
>
> So Tom, if you're going to invest in recovering or "making" precious
> metals for profit, my comment would be to get out of the junk priced
> US$260 an once metals like gold, even by-pass paladium at US$800 an
> ounce, and go right into the real money metal, iridium, selling at a
> whopping US$1,700 an ounce!!! any day of the week.
>
> Palladium's a good patriotic option to break the ruskies cartel if you
> want to risk getting blown away by their mafia, I'd stick to making one
> or two ounces of iriduim a week and pull in a cool US$2500 before tax,
> after broker fees.
>
> Rummer has it, that the demand for palladium will drive it's price to
> over US$8,000 an ounce over the next 5 years due to the fact that SUV's
> are being reclassified from the light truck class into the passenger
> vehicle classification thus requiring them to have pollution control
> systems they currently don't require.
>
> By the way, we made our own 6 kw torches for around $1500 a pop. These
> aren't toys even though their physical size is not any bigger then a
> small flashlight that has 3 C size batteries, but man they're HOT
> puppies! - with operating temperatures well over 5800 degrees F. We
> didn't know at first becuaee our eltronic infra red thermoscanner only
> went up to 1500C and then would just shut off.
>
> We only know the temp. to be more then 5800F because we were sublimating
> our graphite crucibles, and the graphite plugs we purchased to make our
> crucibles was engineered to with stand 5800 degrees F.
>
> They would vaporize like they were made out of ice water! In less then 5
> minutes they would sublimate down from 5/8" thick walls to less then
> 1/16" making them too thin to even pickup with our tongs.
>
> Our reactor walls where the crucible was placed to do the vaporizing
> would be translucent cherry molten plasticized glass. We lined our
> reactor with the hottest refractory brick we could find (and afford),
> and they still would turn to a molten plastic material in about 7 to 10
> minutes of turning on our three torches.
>
> Our reactor body, torche bodies and electrodes were being constantly
> cooled with de-ionized water.
>
> We operated this equipment from our shop electic service, drawing a
> total of only 28 Kwh. when we started playing with idea, we had no idea
> how energy efficient our torhc design would be. for example w've got a
> commercial heavy duty electric heat gun that we use for melting wax
> casting cores our of molds. This needs to get the mold hot pretty quick
> and by industry standards it's considered a "serious" piece of hand held
> electric heating that draws 18 kWh. now it doesn't get over 1800 degrees
> F. we take just two of our tiny torches that draw 12 Kwh and we still
> get over 6000 F in operating temperature. i've held one in my hand while
> it was operating and it had an electric flame extending beyond the
> nozzel about 18 inches that lite up our 18,000 square foot shop like
> UI'd opened the doors to let in the noon day sun!
>
> What's really neat about playing with high energy plasma, is that it's
> really a kind of creation process. For example, we'd start with LESS and
> end up with MORE. In the first two or three experiments we did, we'd
> think that we were so excited with getting a batch into the crucible to
> see what we culd make, and thus we weren't watching our measures very
> well, because the dollop of metal we'd get out from the slag after we
> dumped in the ash cocktail, always weighed more then the total mix we
> would dump into the crucible at the begining of the experiment!!
>
> Our standard mix end up up being 48 grams of blends of ash and other
> minerals and we always ended up with around 57 grams of precious metals.
> These dollops would be a blend of silver, gold, platinum, palladium,
> iridium as well as some other metals. We don't have any explination
> where the extra weight came from because we still haven't accepted the
> idea that you can get something from nothing.
>
> But then ideas come from nothing, so why couldn't matter if the right
> conditions existing? Because ideas need an ideal host before they exist,
> at least that's how I justify my pay cheque each week!!
>
> The bottom line is this, at the elevated temperatures of plasma where
> solids go beyond the liquid phase into a gas phase you get electron
> transference and your metals come together.
>
> We used coal ash for the carbon above C14 as our base or host, then
> played with cheap available elements that had the electrons we'd need to
> dope our carbon with. And that's it.
>
> Plasma simply gave us speed. Guys are doing this in convection ovens and
> take hours and a lot more horsepower to get the high temperatures that
> we got the second we fired our plasma torches on. That's the nice thing
> about plasma, they are 6,000 degrees right away.
>
> Currently we're not doing anything with this process as a matter of fact
> we totally dismantled the equipment and have moved on to "play" with
> other things.
>
> Feel free to write back.
>
> Regards,
>
> Paul Blanshard
> "Tom Milam, Jr." wrote:
> >
> > Does anyone have any thoughts or literature on using plasma to oxidize
> > sulfide concentrates for the recovery of gold and silver?
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> > /s/ Tom Milam, Jr.
> >
> > -----
> > Tom Milam, Jr.
> > The Inglesrud Corporation
> > P. O. Box 18759
> > Oklahoma City, OK 73154
> > Telephone: (405) 843-7389
> > Facsimile: (405) 843-0351
> > Internet: milam@ionet.net
> > Hard rock mining - Honduras
> > Web Page: www.inglesrud.com
> > -----

--




-----
Tom Milam, Jr.
The Inglesrud Corporation
P. O. Box 18759
Oklahoma City, OK 73154
Telephone: (405) 843-7389
Facsimile: (405) 843-0351
Internet: milam@ionet.net
Hard rock mining - Honduras
Web Page: www.inglesrud.com
-----