Gold From Filter Feeders

Ingesting calcium from oyster shell suppliments is supposedly unhealthy from the high lead levels. Filter feeders concentrate the heavy metal in their shell.

Now, to be sure, Pb is more reactive than Au and the concentration is much higher in many oyster beds.

Moreover, years ago I calculated the cost of energy to pump water through a fat short pipe and it came out to be worth more than the gold in the same amount of seawater.

But times change. The entire world is wired so the credit crisis ain't gonna be "solved" by a 1930s style Great Depression + killing 50 million in a world war. Instead they are gonna have to go the inflation route. (Sorry, Bernanke, well trimmed facial hair will only get you so far.)

Gold will soon be worth $2K/oz.

Is anyone working on this?

If sea water doesn't work I know where to get lots of water with much higher concentrations of gold.

You might want to get your seafood somewhere else, however.

Bret Cahill

Reply to
Bret Cahill
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Shellfish don't concentrate gold. Cadmium, lead, mercury, virus, sure. Wrong chemistry.

David A. Smith

Reply to
dlzc

Maybe they can gene splice a zebra mussel with the right chemistry.

Bret Cahill

Reply to
Bret Cahill

There isn't enough gold in seawater. Gold is estimated to be about 10 parts per trillion. That means that you've have to filter 250,000 tonnes of seawater for an ounce of gold. Lets say an oyster was a pipe 10cm^2, you'd need to filter a column 25,000,000 m long. The gulf stream flows at as high as 2.5m/s. So that's 10Ms, or about 4 months. That's the theoetical minimum assuming 100% extraction. If you've got a bed of oysters then some will inevitably end up filtering the sea water that has already passed through another.

Uranium, OTOH, is not far from being commercially expoitable from seawater. U is about 3ppb, about 300x more common than gold. It currently trades at around 60USD/kg, part of the reason the price is so low is because of existing weapons stockpiles fulfilling a lot of the demand for fissile materials. But at $200/kgU it would probably be break-even for extraction from seawater.

What do you want gold for anyway? Other than electronics and jewelry I cannot think of another major demand where gold is "consumed".

Tim.

Reply to
Tim Woodall

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A fast buck / future income.

David A. Smith

Reply to
dlzc

The only organism that concentrates gold is Man. Do you really want to visit the curse of Midas on such lowly organisms? Gold is simply too non-reactive to bioaccumulate.

David A. Smith

Reply to
dlzc

Several microorganisms accumulate gold _in_vitro_. It's still an open question whether certain ores are the result of microbial activity, though the evidence seems convincing.

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Reply to
Mark Thorson

People are only going to extract minerals from seawater when it's commercially viable. Last article I saw on U extraction they were talking about $1bn for the extraction plant. As well as being much more abundant, it's easier to find things that will react or bind with uranium.

I'd expect that the price of gold would be lower than the cost of extracting gold from seawater. If it ever rises to the extraction costs then I'd expect it not to go much higher. I really can't see gold extracted from seawater as ever having a significant financial value over and above what it costs to extract.

Tim.

Reply to
Tim Woodall

Fast is correct, in one hand and out the other before you even get to count it. Obama-nomics. its coming!

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Reply to
Jamie

The concentration of gold in water near a fault line is high enough so that the byproduct pipe clogging scale from geo thermal plants can be processed for the metal.

The gold probably isn't profitable by itself without the geo plant.

To be sure all the other heavy metals will kill anything and everything over a period of time but all an organism has to do is stay alive long enough to concentrate some gold.

Bret Cahill

Reply to
Bret Cahill

Believe it or not this is reassuring.

"Thou knowest not gold's effect."

Act I Scene 2 _The Taming of the Shrew_ (1492)

Reply to
Bret Cahill

"The search for gold has impoverished more European nations . . ."

-- DeTocqueville

Reply to
Bret Cahill

Careful, there! Extracting too much gold will inflate the gold- based currencies. Better to stick with a nice, stable fiat currency.

;)

Reply to
Wim Lewis

When I first saw the header to this thread, I thought "Gold from filter feeders" must be about lawyers!

Best regards,

Bob Masta DAQARTA v4.51 Data AcQuisition And Real-Time Analysis

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Scope, Spectrum, Spectrogram, Sound Level Meter FREE Signal Generator Science with your sound card!

Reply to
Bob Masta

It would have read, "Gold from bottom-feeders" surely?

Brian W

Reply to
Brian Whatcott

Gold's value is mostly symbolic, largely irrational. As an industrial chemical, it would be worth a fraction of its current value.

So if you produce a lot more gold, you'll dilute its value in roughly the proportion that you increase the amount in circulation. Same with diamonds, which were once worth a few dollars a carat until the supply was restricted.

You could make a heap of money transiently, if you had a modest-scale way to extract and sell gold.

Such dreams of getting rich off gold is another indicator of its irrational appeal. Other materials are more valuable and less exploited.

John

Reply to
John Larkin

The successful ones are top feeders which is the real reason they'll generally try to undermine democracy, lofty statements about the tyranny of the majority, etc., notwithstanding. Without a top and bottom tort income drops precipitously.

No profession has been hit harder by cheap communications. The only growth field in law is intellectual property.

Bret Cahill

"The freedom of the press and the sovereignty of the people are, therefore, entirely correlative whereas censorship and universal suffrage contradict each other and cannot long coexist in the institutions of the same people."

-- DeTocqueville

Reply to
Bret Cahill

That's the best news I've heard in a good while. All that engineering & science talent drained off to train for ambulance chasing. Too bad,

Brian W

Reply to
Brian Whatcott

Even geo exploitation of "useful" materials like coal is often a dubious way to make money.

Where would you rather live? Netherlands where they don't even have land? Or Iraq where if the oil wealth was distributed on a per head basis, every man woman and child is or will soon be worth over $10 million?

But that doesn't mean geo exploitation doesn't often have beneficial spinoffs, i. e., Texas Instruments invention of the chip.

Already someone mentioned uranium from sea water. In that case the energy supply from nukes really could last thousands of years.

Bret Cahill

Reply to
Bret Cahill

Progress happens.

Many quit and retrain for the productive sector.

Bret Cahill

Reply to
Bret Cahill

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