World Oceans

In the waters of the oceans dissolved many millions of tons of gold. Is it possible to remove it from the water? Such a problem is the interest of scientists, and not only scientists, has for at least a hundred years.

The first report of detection of gold in sea water, made by a member of the French Academy of Sciences, dates back to 1886 after the First World War, this question has already been seriously studied in Germany, when it was imposed on the country to pay compensation. German scientists during this period persistently tried to find a way to extract gold from seawater.  As a result of these efforts ocean sciences has been enriched with new data: In search of the area where the water would have more gold, the German research vessel “Meteor” scoured along and across the waters of the Atlantic during the 1924 – 1928 years. It has been found, however, that the concentration of gold rarely exceeds a few thousandths of a milligram per ton of water. The highest content of gold was discovered in the South Atlantic, and made it about 1 mg of the precious metal in 1 m of water. Subsequently, the concentration of dissolved gold was determined by many researchers.  The data obtained often differed by more than a thousand times, and therefore the question of the average content of gold in the waters of the ocean, until recently, remained open.

Practical methods for extracting gold from sea water began offering in 1912 These methods usually are the processes of its concentration on various materials: coke, charcoal, peat, wood flour, glass powder and some other more complex composition of substances. Testing of various natural and synthetic materials as a “trap” for gold is not allowed, however, the desired practical results.  Apparently, the only authentic case of obtaining gold from sea water has occurred in California, where an American chemical company had the experience: of the 15 tons of water were extracted 0.00009 g of gold worth 0.0001 U.S. dollar.

Nevertheless, experiments on the extraction of sea water the precious metal continues in many countries. In this case, hopes not only to new technological solutions, but also the fact that, finally, will be found ocean areas with abnormally high content of dissolved gold in sea water.