Mineral Recovery Methods

There are 5 main mineral recovery methods and we’ll talk a little about each of them in this article.

By the way, this is the webmaster writing. I’m good at web things (only), while Ian is the expert when it comes to gold recovery. But I just watched the free DVD about the gold wave table so I can tell you a little of what I have learned.

The DVD was made by Mike and Nancy Glenn of Action Mining Services in the USA. Their company makes these remarkable machines. More on that later…

Mineral Recovery Methods

1. Leaching. This uses chemicals, and more technical know-how is required than you need to use a gold wave table. Chemical leaching is also the most expensive mineral recovery method. Mike’s main focus is on gold recovery but the machines work for any mineral which is heavier.

2. Amalgamation. The idea here is that you first amalgamate the gold with mercury and then you separate it. But Mike explained that this is not easy. “Your mercury has to be clean and your gold has to be clean. Then they have to come into contact.” Like #1, this process is also technically intensive then it requires another operation to get the gold out of the mercury. And mercury fumes are poisonous.

3. Flotation is also technically intensive.

4. As he worked his way down the list, next came mechanical separation which is what the Micron Mill Wave Table does. It’s a wet gravity separator that separates any heavy mineral according to its SG (specific gravity). This doesn’t use chemicals. Just water and the oscillating wave table. It’s quite neat to see it at work on the DVD.

5. Finally sluices, the traditional method of gold recovery, are the easiest. The problem with using a gold sluice is that it misses the fine gold… the microscopic gold. The Wave Table machine is able to recover this micron-fine material.

The DVD presentation showed a bucket of dirt being poured into the system at one end, and out comes a concentrate containing the gold particles.