Gold Refining
The earliest way the gold refining process was handled was by panning in a stream, but now many of those are depleted. Panning relies upon the density of gold being much greater than that of the sand and other particulates it therefore settles to the bottom of the pan in the end of the gold refining process. Today, more often than not our gold refining process is done from harvested ores. These ores often contain relatively little gold. Some of these processes cause environmental concern. The ore is crushed to a powder to expose the small gold particles. These are dissolved by adding a cyanide solution in air. The result of this is a gold cyanide complex and adding zinc powder precipitates the gold refining process.
