The process of mercury mixing essentially includes the wetting of gold by mercury and the homogenization of mercury. The wetting of gold by mercury is carried out in aqueous medium. In order to make the mercury liquid wet gold well, gold particles must be exposed to the surface of the ore as much as possible, and the surface of gold particles must be kept fresh. Compounds such as silver and copper, iron filings and engine oil are easy to pollute the surface of gold particles and mercury beads, making the wettability of mercury to gold worse. If the liquid mercury contains a small amount of gold, silver or a small amount of base metals, the wettability of mercury to gold can be improved. After wetting the surface of gold particles, mercury diffuses into them and forms amalgam, or alloy. This process is called mercury amalgamation.

The product of mercury mixing is mercury paste, which is mainly composed of gold amalgam and contains excess mercury and other impurities. First, wash the mercury paste with water to remove the heavy sand, gangue and other impurities. Then filter the cleaned mercury paste by pressure to remove free mercury. Finally, place the filtered mercury paste in the distillation tank, isolate the air and heat it at the bottom to about 1073k. The mercury paste in the tank is decomposed and gasified by heating, and escapes from the top pipe. There is a cooling water jacket outside the pipe. The liquefied mercury liquid flows into the cooling water basin along the pipe. The condensed mercury liquid and the mercury liquid filtered by pressure are combined and returned to the mercury mixing operation. The gold is kept in the tube in the form of sponge gold. After smelting and refining, the gold ingot is obtained.