| Show CYANIDING BIG CREEK ORE boise statesman J B eldredge manager of the independence mine has demonstrated that the ores I 1 of that property are perfectly amenable to the cyanide process he has also satisfied himself in a general way that the ores of most of the other big creek properties can be treated in that manner this is a very important feature of the mining situation in that section with the ores treated on the ground the remoteness from the railway will not be a serious drawback the gold and silver will come out in the form of bullion there being no heavy cost of transporting the product for the purpose of making his experiments mr eldredge has set up a small cyanide plant at his home in this city in this he can work pounds of ore at a time and he gets very satisfactory results the plant is a little gem it is run by an electric motor and moves as smoothly as a large plant the compressed air method of agitation is employed that method has made a marvelous improvement in cyaniding cyan iding ore the phe compressed air is introduced Ii rough a coil at the bottom of the pulp vat As it escapes it keeps the pulp perfectly agitated so the solution can percolate through it readily but another and far more important feature of the use of compressed air lies I 1 in n the fact that the air so compressed has a percentage of free oxygen this free oxygen unites at once with the and the combination takes up the gold and silver almost immediately owing to the greater efficiency of the cyanide when used in this manner results are obtained in five hours that would de mand seventy two hours under the old method not only is time saved but the amount of cyanide used is reduced from one tenth to one fifteenth of 1 per cent of cyanide to accomplish the same results that I 1 per cent would bring about under the former plan of operation the free oxygen makes the cyanide more active and it takes up the precious metals promptly thus it becomes possible to cyanide ores carrying large percentages of many of the base metals whereas formerly these base metals made it impossible to utilize the process at all on ores in which they were found in any quantity thus is the solution of the problem of reducing the ores of big creek brought about its importance is apparent to every mining man but the general public has not understood that the improvements in the cyanide process are of such far reaching importance |
