A new source for precious metals?

An they say you can't turn **** into money.



2015 reality tv...Poo Diggers!

I expect a cut if any tv producers are reading this an steal my show.

Thanks for sharing Joe. Further proof one can find money in just about everything.

Sirscrapalot - Poo on you. - Some 2 year old.

Originally Posted by freonjoe

Ran across this online:

"Researchers at Arizona State University estimate that in a city of one million people, $13 million dollars worth of metals could be accumulating annually in sludge, the byproduct of treated sewage.

The study, which analyzed sludge from treatment centers in Arizona and samples from across the country stored at the U.S. National Biosolids Repository, focused on 13 minerals with the highest value, including gold, silver, copper, and platinum. If every bit of the metals is retrieved, researchers reported there could be $280 per ton of sludge."

Full article here:


There

I think some of the minds on here could come up with a way to process this material!

Joe,

Thank you. Read the article, very interesting. I do question the numbers. I'm sitting here watching "Gold Rush", and remember them talking about how much per yard they were getting. These guys seem happy with $10 or more per yard. Anything north of $25 is awesome. A cubic yard of concrete is about 2 tons. Lets just say sludge is similar (I know it's not the same). So 1 ton would be 0.5 cubic yards. On "gold rush", they would be happy with $5 and loving it with $12.50 or more. This is talking about 20+ times the high end.

From the sounds of it, the easy way is to incinerate the dry sluge to get rid of the "organics" and then process the rest as some sort of ore, loaded with all kinds of precious metals. And, I suppose, a lot of grit, or basically rock--the valueless stuff that won't burn off.

Probably not a lot different than how precious metal ores are dealt with now. Maybe even how they process things like catalytic converter PM's.

So it might turn out to be pretty straightforward to separate the goodies. Do we have any mining engineers on SMF?

There's a lot of other metals in there, too, maybe not worth that much but that are bad actors and could be removed to help the environment--the cadmiums and mercury and lead and ....

I wonder where all the PM's come from? I know that in my household we sure as heck don't have any precious metals that we are washing down the sink. No gold plated faucets, no silver cutlery, darn!!

Jon.

Originally Posted by miked

I watched a show about people who search the cracks in the side walks of the diamond district in NYC for diamonds. The story was they would find some small one diamonds. Mike.

here's the segment from that show -