Almaden mine

In comparison, higher THg levels (up to 9 pg/g dw) have been reported in the Almaden mercury mining district (Ciudad Real, Spain) [51], which can be regarded as the largest geochemical anomaly of mercury on Earth. 

Mercury is the 68th most abundant element. Although it can occur in its natural state, it is more commonly found as a sulfide of mercury. Its chief ore is cinnabar (HgS), which sometimes is called vermihon due to its red color. Historically, cinnabar was used as a red pigment. Today it is mined in Italy, Spain, and California. The best-known mercury mine is located at Almaden, Spain. It has been in continuous operation since 400 bce. 

J. M. Hoppensack stated in 1795 that the mercury mines of Almaden had been worked for at least 2287 years and that cinnabar from them was sent to ancient Rome in the form of powder or sand (58). A. de Galvez-Canero believed that the Spanish mercury mines have been worked since the third or fourth century B.C. (28). In the Memoires of the Acaddmie des Sciences of Paris for 1719, Antoine Jussieu published a first-hand description of the great mine and smelters at Almaden, Spain, which he had visited two years previously (233). He was surprised to find that the crops, trees, and inhabitants were not injured by the fumes, and that springs near the mine yielded good potable water. The slaves who worked and ate in the mine however suffered severely from mercury poisoning (231). 

Leicester, Henry M., The New Almaden Mine. The first chemical indus-... 

Before charging the retorts, the ore is reduced to a coarse powder, then mixed with quicklime, and shovelled in. Six or seven hundredweight of the mixture, a sufficient charge for eaeh retort, can, with a proper amount of heat, be worked off in about three hours. The process is continuous, and, with an efficient staff of workmen, oould he daily made, by using nine such retorts, to decompose six tons of the mixture—a quan-tfty which, if the ore was rich like that of the Idrinn or Almaden mines, would equal twelve hundred to a ton of mercuiy daily. 

The quicksilver mines at Almaden in the province of Ciudad Real, Spain, are the richest and most valuable in Europe, normally producing about half the world s supply of the metal. They were worked at the time of the Punic Wars, 600 b.c., and the first actual excavations are believed to have taken place at this time.. They cover an area of some 12 square miles, and as yet but a small proportion has been worked. In 1927 the output was 2,500 tons in 1935 it was 1,227 tons, the output having been restricted in 1930 the present production is not known. Mercury mining is an unhealthy task, and in the early days it was allotted to slaves later it was the duty of convicts, and the Spanish Government at one time granted exemption from military service to men who had been at Almaden for two years. 

Mercury has an average abundance of approximately 50mgkg in the Earth s crust, with significant local variations. Normally, the ores that are mined contain about 1% mercury (up to 14% in the strata mined in Almaden, Spain). In most cases. 

Within the first decade of the twenty-first century and beyond, 13000 metric tons of additional mercury wUl become available from conversion and shutdown of chloro-alkali plants using the mercury process, as the EU press for a phase-out of this process before 2010. It is agreed with the Minas de Almaden (Spain) that they buy this surplus of mercury and put it on the market in place of the mercury that Almaden would otherwise have mined (UNEP 2002). Moreover, large strategic national reserve stocks of mercury, such as 4435 metric tons in the USA, become superfluous and wait to... 

Lindberg SE, Jackson DR, Huckabee JW, Janzen SA, Levin MJ and Lund JR (1979) Atmospheric Emission and Plant Uptake of Mercury from Agricultural Soils near the Almaden Mercury Mine. J Environ Qual 8 572—578. 

New Almaden. At New Almaden, two distinct plumes containing peak values of 1500 ng/meter were detected at specific points along the roadways adjacent to the operations of the New Almaden Mine. In general, the anomalies appeared to lie in the small valleys which make up the drainage of the mining area itself. To the east (downwind from the mines), levels which varied between 10 and 20 ng/meter were detected near the Calero Reservoir. 

NV. He was then from 1876 to 1877 resident engineer for the New Almaden Mine CA, then the largest quicksilver mine in America. In 1880 and 1881 he made a trip to Mexico to report on mines with the US Geological Survey. He went in 1882 to Idaho as chief engineer of the Idaho Land and Irrigation Company, Boise ID, to build an irrigation system... 

Most important mineral The main source of mercury is the mineral cinnabar HgS (Figure M48). The Almaden mine in Spain has been in continuous operation for cinnabar since 400 bc. 

Almaden, some 225 km southwest of Madrid, is the richest mercury mine in the world. The mineraHzation originally occurred in connection with volcanic activity. 

Ore from Almaden and other mercury mines is crushed and heated in the presence... 

The main ore of mercury is cinnabar, HgS. It has been mined for 2500 years in places like Almaden in Spain. Other important... 

Pliny provides an extensive review of the cinnabar industry in his Book 33, chapters 36 to 41. The major source of cinnabar for the Romans was the Almaden mine (the world s oldest continuously active mine) in the Baetic region of Spain. Imports into Rome, where it was mainly used as a pigment, were one ton per year from this site. 

---