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Title: Scientists make gold with bacteria Post by: Liquid on October 04, 2012, 03:04:20 PM http://vr-zone.com/articles/scientists-make-gold-with-bacteria/17342.html
Wow seen this Title: Re: Scientists make gold with bacteria Post by: joecascio on October 04, 2012, 03:09:30 PM Well, "Extracting Gold" would be a lot more accurate. I wonder how much naturally occurring gold chloride there is in the air.
Title: Re: Scientists make gold with bacteria Post by: Luno on October 04, 2012, 03:11:33 PM 50 tonnes pr. cubic kilometer sea water
Title: Re: Scientists make gold with bacteria Post by: caveden on October 04, 2012, 03:20:06 PM Luno, are you sure you're talking about the same thing?
I know there's lots of gold in the oceans (http://vr-zone.com/articles/scientists-make-gold-with-bacteria/17342.html), but is it in the form of this gas OP's article talks about? Anyways, even if it isn't, with all the advances in genetic engineering, it might not take that long for people to be able to fabricate bacteria capable of extracting gold from the oceans. Title: Re: Scientists make gold with bacteria Post by: Luno on October 04, 2012, 05:16:01 PM Sodium and Cloride in sea water (table salt) and Gold is soluble in Cloride, so there are Gold-Chlorides in sea water also. You make a slurry for the bacteria which contains Gold with electrolysis. The bacteria can either live in the slurry or the slurry can be baked to release the Chloride as gas. You could make a small desktop plant for proof of concept nothing fancy.
Let's crash the gold market Title: Re: Scientists make gold with bacteria Post by: greyhawk on October 04, 2012, 05:17:44 PM Is it summer again? Normally we hear about this process only in the beginning of summer. Every summer. For the last 15 years. At least.
Title: Re: Scientists make gold with bacteria Post by: Coinabul on October 04, 2012, 05:23:37 PM Well, shoot, $1 gold coins for everyone?
Title: Re: Scientists make gold with bacteria Post by: Luno on October 04, 2012, 05:32:52 PM Cupriavidus metallidurans is the name of the bacteria. It's also used to clean soil for heavy metals.
Adam Brown MSU, shows the machine as an "art" show. The electrolysis part is easy: keep the potential below 1.48V so you don't hydrolyse the sea water (we don't want Hydrogen and Oxygen) Gold salts are deposited on the chatode. 1 tonne of sea water per hour gives 1-2 Mg of Gold per hour, so you need a pump or to dump the electrodes off shore in non stagnant sea water. Free electricity is nice, like in GPU mining. The process might be economical sound still, we need some figures to judge the power usage. Real mining@home Title: Re: Scientists make gold with bacteria Post by: Luno on October 04, 2012, 06:37:16 PM Done some calculations myself: 0.6 Wh per gram of gold deposited, very little power needed. However that means that you will have to pass 1000 cubic meters of sea water which takes power or open sea. You could anchor a solar powered bouy with titanium electrodes. would be like having a clamp farm at sea.
Title: Re: Scientists make gold with bacteria Post by: stochastic on October 04, 2012, 11:11:24 PM http://vr-zone.com/articles/scientists-make-gold-with-bacteria/17342.html Wow seen this There is actually a long history of this research, see http://www.sciencemag.org/content/313/5784/233.abstract Title: Re: Scientists make gold with bacteria Post by: Luno on October 05, 2012, 06:07:01 AM Interesting also that some natural gold deposits might be of biological origin!
Title: Re: Scientists make gold with bacteria Post by: naypalm on October 05, 2012, 07:17:45 AM Put that dirty Bacteria to work for you. :D
Title: Re: Scientists make gold with bacteria Post by: bitcoinbear on October 07, 2012, 12:41:24 PM Done some calculations myself: 0.6 Wh per gram of gold deposited, very little power needed. However that means that you will have to pass 1000 cubic meters of sea water which takes power or open sea. You could anchor a solar powered bouy with titanium electrodes. would be like having a clamp farm at sea. Anytime you stick something in the water in the open ocean you have to worry about biofouling. How are you going to keep things from growing on your structure and stopping up the water flow? Title: Re: Scientists make gold with bacteria Post by: bitcoinbear on October 07, 2012, 12:46:05 PM From the article:
Quote Assuming you can actually tell the difference between the two, manufactured gold, if it ever became common, wouldn't be worth as much as the naturally occurring stuff; just as manufactured diamonds aren't nearly as valuable as the ones pulled from the ground. I think this last sentence is total bunk. It does not matter where the gold came from, or how it was processed, if it is pure then it is just as valuable as any other gold. Because you can't tell the difference. Title: Re: Scientists make gold with bacteria Post by: Bitcoin Oz on October 07, 2012, 12:46:28 PM Can you create bitcoins using bacteria :P
Title: Re: Scientists make gold with bacteria Post by: bitcoinbear on October 07, 2012, 12:56:54 PM Can you create bitcoins using bacteria :P some people have used bacteria as micro-reactors to produce electrical power, so in a way, yes! Title: Re: Scientists make gold with bacteria Post by: Raoul Duke on October 07, 2012, 12:59:37 PM Can you create bitcoins using bacteria :P You can use Bitcoins to attract bacteria... Title: Re: Scientists make gold with bacteria Post by: organofcorti on October 07, 2012, 01:06:23 PM From the article: Quote Assuming you can actually tell the difference between the two, manufactured gold, if it ever became common, wouldn't be worth as much as the naturally occurring stuff; just as manufactured diamonds aren't nearly as valuable as the ones pulled from the ground. I think this last sentence is total bunk. It does not matter where the gold came from, or how it was processed, if it is pure then it is just as valuable as any other gold. Because you can't tell the difference. You could tell the difference if there was a certificate of authenticity, and a demand for biologically condensed gold. I imagine there would also be a corresponding demand for forged certificates of authenticity. Title: Re: Scientists make gold with bacteria Post by: bitcoinbear on October 07, 2012, 01:11:55 PM From the article: Quote Assuming you can actually tell the difference between the two, manufactured gold, if it ever became common, wouldn't be worth as much as the naturally occurring stuff; just as manufactured diamonds aren't nearly as valuable as the ones pulled from the ground. I think this last sentence is total bunk. It does not matter where the gold came from, or how it was processed, if it is pure then it is just as valuable as any other gold. Because you can't tell the difference. You could tell the difference if there was a certificate of authenticity, and a demand for biologically condensed gold. I imagine there would also be a corresponding demand for forged certificates of authenticity. So you are saying this bacterial gold should have a higher price than the stuff from the ground? The article implies the opposite, that the bacterial gold would have a lower price because it is "artificial". Title: Re: Scientists make gold with bacteria Post by: organofcorti on October 07, 2012, 01:22:20 PM From the article: Quote Assuming you can actually tell the difference between the two, manufactured gold, if it ever became common, wouldn't be worth as much as the naturally occurring stuff; just as manufactured diamonds aren't nearly as valuable as the ones pulled from the ground. I think this last sentence is total bunk. It does not matter where the gold came from, or how it was processed, if it is pure then it is just as valuable as any other gold. Because you can't tell the difference. You could tell the difference if there was a certificate of authenticity, and a demand for biologically condensed gold. I imagine there would also be a corresponding demand for forged certificates of authenticity. So you are saying this bacterial gold should have a higher price than the stuff from the ground? The article implies the opposite, that the bacterial gold would have a lower price because it is "artificial". No gold should have any higher price than any other type of gold. My comment was more to indicate that if someone wanted to use the origin of the gold as a marketing ploy (either pro or anti bio condensed gold) there'd be a way to do it. I personally think it's ridiculous to try to differentiate them. Pure gold is, as you wrote, just pure gold. The only way to tell the difference is if it's not pure, or if bio condensed gold contains different isotope ratios to naturally produced gold. Even if you could tell the difference there would be no difference in quality between them. It's as stupid a notion as "Hey, I just bought some CPU mined bitcoin from back in 2009! Cost a fortune and it'll hold it's value better than the crappy GPU and FPGA mined stuff you get nowadays". In short, I hope the sentence you quoted is bunk. If not, I weep for the human race. Title: Re: Scientists make gold with bacteria Post by: Luno on October 08, 2012, 12:16:37 AM The Germans are making Bio Gold. Though a chemical process - it's almost not worth the investment but the gold is sold at market price. Gold is gold, Mined or alluvial gold is priced based on the percentage of other metals; copper, silver, tungsten, iron etc. A weekend gold miner would be happy if paid 70% of spot for some raw washed gold. As a hobby gold miner it's not worth the effort to cast small bullions yourself, as it's harder for the buyer to judge the purity of the larger bullion so you will get a lower price.
About fouling of the electrodes, yes that might be a problem. Some tuuting blinking buys have aluminium copper electrodes to generate electricity and the galvanic action keep them clear of marine growth. |