A two season project funded by US State Department through Blacksmith demonstrated a way to extract auriferous mercury form tailings produced by small-scale gold mining.

The project also focused on teaching the small-scale gold miners to use mercury-free gold extraction. It was demonstrated that mercury-free gold extraction produced more gold than amalgamation method.

The mercury was captured by the Peter Plates which is a modernized version of the Australian State Batteries invented around 1850. One of the photos show a closeup of Peter Plate with mercury being captured on the metal.

The photo with the big stone is a local method of milling the gold ore. The stone is tilted bag and forth whereby it crush and grind the gold ore.