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Trilobiteme asked in EnvironmentConservation · 3 months ago

Could desalination plants filter out gold and silver from salt water?

5 Answers

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  • Anonymous
    2 months ago

    In a reverse osmosis (RO) desalination plant the salt and the gold and silver will be concentrated in the retentate.  They are still pretty dilute though.

  • Anonymous
    3 months ago

    Absolutely. Its just that the return on investment is too low with current technology to make it worth while. If someone could invent a type of filter process that would not cost so much they’d be sitting on a gold mine. And a silver mine too. Literally. 

  • 3 months ago

    Sort of. The cheapest method is solar distillation, which removes fresh water for drinking. What is left is a brine, which contains a lot of salt and trace amounts of precious methods. Allow the water to evaporate and you get mostly sea-salt, with trace "contamination" of gold and silver. It would not yield enough of those metals to pay for their extraction.

  • Anonymous
    3 months ago

    Doodly doo doo doo....Perhaps.

  • God
    Lv 7
    3 months ago

    In a reverse osmosis (RO) desalination plant the salt and the gold and silver will be concentrated in the retentate.  They are still pretty dilute though.

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