"Franz Heymann" wrote in message
...

"Ned Flanders" wrote in message
om...
There are no such things as gold ores to my knowledge.

Sure there is, Calaverite, Chalcocite, Bornite,
Chalcopyrite and enargite, are a few....

Gold is an almost inert element.

As far as I know, gold is always found as a simple metal.

No. That would be native gold--which is rare. Most gold is in ores.

That is incorrect. 95% of the gold mined in the world occurs as native
gold, or as gold-silver alloys (or simple mechanical mixtures. I am not
quite certain). The only gold ore of any significance id Calaverite,
which
is gold telluride, which is mined in quantities which are small compared
to
the native gold mined in South Africa.

The other minerals you quote do not contain any gold in their chemical
compositions.

Franz Heymann

Just because most gold mined is "native" gold, doesn't mean that's
where most gold occurs. It's just not economically feasible to recover
most gold.


From http://www.toxassociates.com/gold.htm
Gold is present in almost all rocks and soil. In addition, all the
oceans contain dissolved gold. But most gold is too scarcely
distributed to recover profitably. People recover gold only
where nature has concentrated the metal in the earth's crust.

In nature, gold is usually combined with silver in an alloy called
electrum, or with one or more other metals. In addition, traces of
gold often occur in the ore deposits of sulfides (sulfur compounds)
of such metals as iron, copper, nickel, lead, and zinc.

Leaching dissolves the exposed gold out of the ground ore using
a chemical solvent. Today, most gold leaching processes use
cyanide and oxygen.

Don