The ease with which mercury forms an amalgam with gold is also widely exploited by small claim gold miners around the world. Small claim panning for gold is a major use of mercury. In order to extract and consolidate the gold flakes and nuggets, miners in Brazil and elsewhere use elemental mercury to capture the gold flakes in water running over liquid mercury beds. The gold binds with the mercury and the solid gold-amalgam can be sieved off. The mercury is then easily recycled by heating the amalgam in an iron pot with the resulting mercury vapour forced through a water bath where it liquefies again. The gold remains as a solid lump in the crucible.
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