Each year, a potentially dangerous active volcano within the nation of Colombia emits
a little over 400 pounds of gold.
While this might sound like a tall tale told by a 16th century Spanish Conquistador, as
certain conquistadors actually attempted to retrieve reported gold from the lava lake
of Nicaragua's Masaya volcano in 1538, the reports regarding the Colombian volcano of
Galeras are actually true.
As, due to a combination of geologic phenomena, this active volcano which last erupted in
2014 produces a stunning amount of gold worth approximately 11.3 million U.S. dollars each
year.
The gold is all ejected from a single fairly narrow source; Galeras's 305 meter or 1000
foot wide active crater.
This gold is ejected every day, primarily as a mixture of microscopic particles and
molecules of gold in a gas phase within the typically white colored volcanic gas plume,
rising high into the atmosphere to be eventually dispersed over a wide area.
Yet, not all of this gold is lost into the atmosphere.
As, every day 56 of the 510 grams of gold which is emitted instead sublimates as native
gold, electrum aka gold which contains 30% to 45% by weight silver, and as microscopic
crystals within the wall rocks of the volcanic crater.
But, there is more.
The highly altered andesite lava rocks which primarily compose Galeras's summit region
contain a potentially economic concentration of gold; as these lava rocks contain 15 grams
of gold per metric ton of ore.
While this might not sound like a lot, this is such a high grade that many mining company
execs could only dream of, as some existing gold mines turn a profit despite only producing
as little as 0.6 grams of gold per metric ton of ore.
Alongside producing approximately 510 grams of gold each day, Galeras seemingly also produces
3.6 kilograms of copper and potentially more than a kilogram of silver every day through
the same manner!
So, should people or companies be rushing to mine this ore, whose existence has been
known by scientists since at least 1994?
To this I say no, with several good reasons.
First of all, the Galeras volcano is completely located within a national park, so collecting
there is always illegal.
And, even if it was allowed, which it isn't, it would be too dangerous to attempt to extract
any ore rock.
As, not only can lethal levels of deadly volcanic gasses which are heavier than air such as
carbon dioxide pool in Galeras's bowl shaped crater, but this volcano's eruptions are sometimes
impossible to predict in the first place, so there might be no warning if it was about
to erupt.
But, what about the 89% of gold, silver, and copper ore which escapes into the atmosphere?
If Galeras was hypothetically not a protected area where mining was forbidden and it was
hypothetically known that it was not going to erupt for the next several thousand years,
could the gas phase metals be extracted?
The answer to this, is surprisingly, yes.
At Russia's Kurdiavy volcano in the Kurile Islands, its active crater via a series of
high temperature fumaroles release 20 metric tons each year of an element twice as rare
as gold; the element rhenium.
For more than 2 decades there have been attempts to extract quantities of this element from
Kudriavy as such production could end up representing 49% of world rhenium production, potentially
being worth $32.2 million US dollars.
The plan was to build a giant concrete dome which would separate various gasses by density,
before sending the dense rhenium gas into a secondary trap containing numerous zeolites.
Using a smaller scale of this methodology, reportedly 17 kilograms of rhenium was extracted
during a test in 2016!
Thus, in perfect conditions, a similar setup could be used to capture the gold at Galeras.
Yet, why does so much gold exist at this volcano in the first place?
The answer is that Galeras's active crater and the underlying magma conduit which supplied
it were not always in the same location.
Thus, over hundreds of thousands of years preceding the present day, heated hydrothermal
fluids rose above its 2 kilometer deep magma chamber, rising along with various volcanic
gasses and concentrations of valuable elements such as copper and gold which were then deposited
along highly altered rock, forming what is known as an epithermal deposit.
In recent times, the magma conduit simply cut through the existing ore body, so that
now every day parts of it are boiled and fragmented into small particles, subsequently being ejected
via a volcanic gas plume.
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