Cinnabar Gold

Opaque minerals include stibnite, jamesonite, cinnabar, gold, pyrite, pyrrhotite, arsenopyrite, marcasite, sphalerite, galena and chalcopyrite. 

Uses of the Reverted Elixir. The third part of the Scripture of the Golden Liquor concerns the uses of the Reverted Elixir. Placed on fire, it will form the Elixir-Gold (or Cinnabar Gold, danjin). This can be used for smearing the blades of swords that keep the other weapons ten thousand miles away (a phrase that also appears in the Nine Elixirs) or for casting dishes and cups. Those who eat and drink from these vessels can live as long as Heaven and Earth, for these vessels, like the fangzhu mirrors, absorb the essences of the sun and the moon. ... 

Bright Mirror of Highest Clarity). It attributes to Laozi the statement that the best zhi grow above cinnabar, gold, malachite, and realgar, and teaches how to plant these minerals at the four directions of a mountain on the days of the solstices and the equinoxes so that they produce zhi plants. 

Callias of Athens, the discoverer of cinnabar in 405 B.C., hoped that by firing cinnabar, gold could be produced. The shiny nature of this material had led him to this conclusion. The above mesmerizing transformation only reinforced the erroneous possibility that gold too could be created. Adding to the golden fallacy was that cinnabar was also known in Colchis, the land of Golden Fleece fame. 

Hayat, M.A. (1989) Colloidal Gold, Principles, Methods, and Applications, Academic Press, San Diego, USA. Mahdihassan, S. (1985) Cinnabar-gold as the best alchemical drug of longevity, called Makaradhwaja in India. The American Journal of Chinese Medicine, 13, 93-108. 

The ore minerals display a zonal distribution gold and cinnabar are enriched in the upper part of the veins, and sphalerite, galena and chalcopyrite are more abundant in the deeper parts. Pyrrhotite and arsenopyrite are distributed throughout the veins. 

From the mode of occurrence of opaque minerals it is considered that pyrrhotite and sphalerite were precipitated at an early-stage, gold, pyrite, marcasite, stibnite and cinnabar were precipitated at a late-stage, and arsenopyrite was precipitated throughout the mineralization period. 

For molybdenite concentrates hydroxy ions must be added to maintain a near neutral pH value. The pH value at which the electroleaching of other metal sulfides is conducted depends upon the amount of hydroxy ions added. For example, when a low grade cinnabar ore is treated, the pH remains almost neutral because of the calcite content of the ore. This is also true of carbonaceous gold ores. 

Sulfur is an element found in many common minerals, such as galena (PbS), pyrite (fool s gold, FeSj), sphalerite (ZnS), cinnabar (HgS), and celestite (SrSO ), among others. About 1/4 of all sulfur procured today is recovered from petroleum production. The majority of sulfur is the result of or a by-product of mining other minerals from the ores containing sulfur. 

Perhaps it was only natural that people steeped in Greek philosophy would think of trying to make gold when they encountered the rich Egyptian tradition of practical chemistry. Hadn t Aristotle said that transformations were possible Isn t that what happened when, for example, cinnabar (mercury ore) was heated Heating the red material, cinnabar, caused a pool of liquid metal to form. Didn t other chemical transformations take place when substances were heated, dissolved, melted, filtered, and crystallized ... 

Mercury is mined predominantly as HgS in cinnabar ore and is then converted commercially to a variety of chemical forms. Key industrial and commercial applications of mercury are found in the electrolytic production of chlorine and caustic soda the manufacture of electrical equipment, thermometers, and other instruments fluorescent lamps dental amalgam and artisanal gold production. Use in pharmaceuticals and in biocides has declined substantially in recent years, but occasional use in antiseptics and folk medicines is still encountered. Thimerosal, an organomercurial preservative that is metabolized in part to ethylmercury, has been removed from almost all the vaccines in which it was formerly present. Environmental exposure to mercury from the burning of fossil fuels, or the bioaccumulation of methylmercury in fish, remains a concern in some regions of the world. Low-level exposure to mercury released from dental amalgam fillings occurs, but systemic toxicity from this source has not been established. 

We find in Albertus a general knowledge of many specific facts and operations of chemistry. He knew of the operations of distillation and sublimation and of the apparatus used in these operations, of the purification of gold and silver by cementation and by the use of lead. He knew that quicksilver may be successively distilled without loss of weight that cinnabar can be produced by the union of quicksilver and sulphur that wine, when heated gives off an inflammable substance which he calls an oil (oleum) supernatant and inflammable. 61 He describes many metals, minerals, salts and other substances, without, however, adding any facts of interest not comprised in the authorities which precede him. 

The gold sulfides appear to react with Hg(0) in a similar manner as the covellite redox process. It was expected that there would be significant formation of amalgams, as in Reaction (2), but XRD analysis revealed the formation of cinnabar and metallic gold as reflected in Reaction (3) and (4). 

Gold and platinum are so inactive that they are usually found in nature in uncombined form, but copper and silver, which are slightly more active, are found in both combined and uncombined form. Copper, silver, and mercury commonly occur in sulfide ores that are easily reduced by roasting. Cinnabar (HgS), for example, yields elemental mercury when the ore is heated at 600°C in a stream of air ... 

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