So, I have been learning a bit about nanotechnology by digging around on the web. I had been aware of it as an idea back in the seventies and seen it presented in some science fiction stories and novels and TV and movie shows. I hadn't realized what a already in action reality that it is.
It's like the 3D printer, one day I knew about it as an idea. The next time I came across it it was already in use in cities around the country for relatively mundane things like making hard to find replacement parts for classic cars. Heck. someone even tried to pawn a 3d gun on Pawn Stars or a similar show, but there were legal reasons they wouldn't buy it.
Basically nanotechnology is mechanical/chemical imitation of biology. Just as individual biological cells are extremely complicated machines made up of specific chemical structures; the nano world is a man made way of controlling matter from that tiny nano-scale. They can build sub-molecular sized machines and even computers and from there they can build assemblers to make a nano factory and build up sophisticated systems and materials for use in more ways than have yet been imagined.
I had this mental picture of little tiny robot bugs running around in the leach pads, eating up the ore and expelling gold and silver as waste product. Maybe even being programmed to expel it at a central point, kind of a PM litter box. Sad to say it's not quite that science fictiony. Basically it is still going to be leaching gold but instead of using a toxic poison as the agent, it will be using cornstarch! Here is an article from Nanowerk.com a site that keeps track and posts articles on the nano tech world.
This may be a really good and efficient way to recover gold from ore. In the high 90 percentile from what I've read. But it leaves questions like how to recover the silver without still using a toxic chemical? Do we have to develop a two step leaching process? And what good is the process if there are a range of valuable to precious metals in the ores being mined. There is a lot of research still to be done and maybe some more powders to try out. Maybe an oatmeal based powder to extract silver and a little bit of soy to bring out the copper. Maybe a mint extract to bring out Palladium and vanilla for Radium.
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