THE GOLDEN POLAR SEAS

All sea water contains gold. This fact, which has been known for some time, is at present without practical value, since to extract every dollar’s worth it would be necessary to expend several dollars in labor and equipment. Under these circumstances, it is interesting, but will cause no “gold rush,” to learn that Arctic waters are richest in the precious metal, as was announced recently before the Verein Deutscher Chemiker, at a session held at Kiel, Germany. At this meeting, we are told in The Engineering and Mining Journal (New York), Prof. F. Haber gave the results of a research which he and Dr. J. Jaenicke had been prosecuting for many years. We read:

“Earlier investigators found that the gold content of sea water was from five to ten milligrams per metric ton, but the above-mentioned research on 5,000 samples, collected from many seas and from different depths, showed that the amount present is smaller. Water from the South Atlantic contained less than 0.01 per ton; water from the bay of San Francisco a little more, and samples from the Polar seas four or five times this quantity.

“Melted ice from the Polar seas was often considerably richer in gold. The form in which gold occurs in sea water is not, as previously supposed, as dissolved aurichlorid, but as a mineral slime or as a constituent of the plankton organisms.

“Its separation is effected quantitatively by adding a minute amount of alkali polysulfid and a trace of copper, and then filtering through fine sand charged with sulfur. This process, however, would not be practicable on an industrial scale.”

Source: The Literary Digest for February 5, 1927

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