# Help or Info Needed On Gold Recovery Plant



## soogus (Nov 8, 2011)

Hello All,

I am new to the site and thank you all in advance for you taking the time to read and respond to my thread. 

I am trying to put together a Gold recovery plant and have looked at a couple options by different companies. Some seem skeptical (wear and tear, percentage of recovery) and some seem way over priced. I am wondering if any of you have any opinions or ideas on what the best equipment companies are and solutions they might have that would suit my needs. 

I am dealing with a river bed and mining alluvial gold. I am wanting to start out processing 50 tons per hour and have it run 10 hours a day but have the capability to ramp up to at least 100 ton per hour. I am looking to put together a plant that will take the ore down to a concentrate then I will ship to a lab for refinement in 50 gallon drums.

Here are a couple of questions I have:

What are the best and most affordable equipment makers in the industry?

Is there a reputable company that makes an off the shelf plant that I can be purchased and set up?

Is it better or more cost effective to try and piece a plant together?

What can I expect to pay in building such a plant?

Which pieces of equipment are absolutely mandatory to recover gold (sluice boxes, concentration jigs, extruder tables water pumps, etc.) and which are just bonus (feeders, roughing jigs, dewatering systems, etc.)?

What is a standard percentage of recovery?

Thanks again and if you should need more info to help answer some of these questions please let me know

Thanks


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## Grassbur (Nov 8, 2011)

soogus said:


> Hello All,
> 
> I am new to the site and thank you all in advance for you taking the time to read and respond to my thread.
> 
> ...



Welcome to the Forum, I am sure you will be able to get some help on this, we have some very knowledgable refiners here. Have you searched the forum for reccomended equipment?


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## soogus (Nov 8, 2011)

Thanks for the welcome!! 

I have searched for recommended equipment on the forum and I got 0 results. If you know of any threads or topics that discuss equipment I would greatly appreciate your direction. I have only used the search bar in the forum as well as tried to review topic subjects.

Thanks for your help


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## solarsmith (Nov 8, 2011)

you might want to look up some thing that is called the 75 ways of gold recovery. (scribd.com) You can match your placer ore to what type of recovery system may work for you . (lots of variables) the 75 ways info is layed out in an easy to understand artical on gold recovery systems. you will certainly get some ideas from it to guide your search for your needs.

by the way what state is your claim in?
and do you have any assays?
For an operation of the size your describing I expect you would have many of them done by now. and done by some one other than the property owner.
also I hope you are able to get a good contract with the owner. 
a alot of us have been folowing what has been happining to the gold rush alaska guys. 

Thanks Bryan in denver Colorado 303 503 4799 I buy catalytic converters
and have a recreational scale gold mine/mill under construction.


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## Geraldo (Nov 8, 2011)

I am not trying to discourage you, but...there is a lot of info missing from your post, and possibly a lot of info missing in your project.

Some thoughts:

1. There is no such thing as an "off the shelf generic" gold recovery plant. Anyone who is claiming that is either poorly informed or fibbing. Each deposit, and each situation, is different, and requires different things to recover values from rocks.

2. IF your deposit is purely alluvial (placer), then you can focus on gravity separation, as you suggested in your post. Sluice boxes, spiral chutes, shaking tables and all the way to Knelson concentrators. However, do you know that your gold is entirely liberated, or just assume? If your gold is particle gold tied up with marble, granite etc. then you will also need grinding. A 50 tph ball mill is a BIG ball mill. If the gold is especially fine, then you might need a pin mill or other attrition mill for ultra-fine grinding. Expensive and "ramping up" involves buying more mills, for large dollars.

3. I don't know if you have gone through the basic steps involved in proving a deposit, but if you were a large mining company, you would be doing the following:

a). geologist finds potential deposit
b). geologist takes representative samples (not that easy, look up "Pierre Gy" on sampling)
c). geologist sends samples to labs for physical characterization, chemical characterization, gold distribution characterization (nowadays generally done on an automated scanning electron microscope system), etc.
d). mineral treatment engineer looks at the data and develops a plan to test upgrading schemes. This might include lab simulations of sluicing, tabling, grinding, various enhanced gravity sep tools (like centrifugal separation) etc. Eventually a trial flowsheet can be developed based on all the data. The "data" involves a lot of sampling, characterization, chemical analysis etc.
e). process engineer and technicians put together a trial plant design, composed of the most likely unit operations, and run it. Everything is sampled and analyzed. Sometimes this goes from lab, to mini-pilot, to pilot scale. Individual units may even be tested full scale.
f). process engineer (and sometimes designers) put together a trial full scale system and design (pumps, piping, civil, etc.). Equipment vendors are contacted for quotes, equipment selected.
g). Fast forward a bit, and we build a plant (even a tiny one) on site, then go through the hell of commissioning and startup. Then there is the constant tweaking until the plant is actually running at design capacity (assuming a good and valid design) and with expected recoveries. Then comes the monumental task of de-bottlenecking in order to increase capacity.

Have you covered off any of these areas?

How do you know what equipment you need? Maybe you are lucky and have a bunch of coarse gold nuggets flowing by - then you just need a sluice and you are done. But nowadays that isn't very likely. At least you will need to characterize your deposit to give folks a chance at suggesting what equipment you will need (and the manufacturers won't be able to help you either until that point).

Anyway, as for good manufacturers of gravity separation equipment - obviously Knelson if you need a Knelson concentrator or similar device (or Sepro if you want the competing Falcon separator; also gold dredges). Metso Minerals is good for a variety of equipment. Holman Wilfley is good for shaking tables and such. Multotech is pretty well regarded for spiral classifiers and dense media. Thee is one very large company who makes nearly everything - they are on the tip of my tongue but I can't recall right now. Anyway, it really depends on just what equipment you need.

Best Regards, Gerald


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## Reno Chris (Nov 8, 2011)

> What are the best and most affordable equipment makers in the industry?


There are several makers of off the shelf equipment for this type of application. They include:
http://www.goldfieldeng.com/
and 
http://www.vigilantemining.com/



> Is there a reputable company that makes an off the shelf plant that I can be purchased and set up?


See links above. Yes, off the shelf plants do exist.



> Is it better or more cost effective to try and piece a plant together?


Only if you have excellent steel fabricating shills and all the necessary equipment like sheet bending brakes, welding equipment, etc *AND* an excellent understanding of placer gravel processing equipment. If you dont know what you are doing, its easily possible to build equipment that will get less than 50% of the gold in the gravel. It sounds like you dont really have much expertise in this area, so I'd be sure to hire someone who does. 



> What can I expect to pay in building such a plant?


Depends on what ytou try to build - if you do it wrong, you can easily spend more than the cost of buying an off the shelf plant. 



> Which pieces of equipment are absolutely mandatory to recover gold (sluice boxes, concentration jigs, extruder tables water pumps, etc.) and which are just bonus (feeders, roughing jigs, dewatering systems, etc.)?


You need a feed system and a sluice system, a water handling system (which may include pumps, settling ponds, etc.) plus heavy equipment like dozers, front end loaders and trucks. An extruder table is not a piece of placer processing equipment. 



> What is a standard percentage of recovery?


Depends on a lot of factors - with good equipment properly run it should be in the range of 80% to 90%

Before investing money, you need to do a lot of testing. Don't just assume the ground is rich, or you will fast go broke.


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## solarsmith (Nov 8, 2011)

also your most valuable resorce will be the the people with the knowhow, the skills. and the expeieance. are you looking to put a groop together or just finance or manage a project.. thanks BRYAN


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## sawmill (Nov 8, 2011)

soogus

50 to 100 tons per hour requires some expensive processing
equipment. Just the support equipment for moving that much
material will eat up some big bucks.

Have you tested the area to bedrock? I am talking trenches,bore
holes and or pits. Have you ran any material through a small test
plant? Is all the values in a free state,or is part of the values locked
in rocks,and black sand? How much clay are you going to have to
fight? Have you got a plan of operation,and all the permits?

Two machines that haven't been mentioned are crushers,and a
trommel. Both are pretty basic for placer operations. You don't
need a geologist for a placer operation. What you do need is an
experienced placer miner to show you the ropes. There is several
guys on the Alaska Gold Forum,that are doing just what you want
to do. They are nice guys and will help a new guy.


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## soogus (Nov 9, 2011)

Thank you all for the great information you have provided!

My knowledge in the mining industry is very basic but I am trying to catch up fast as I am trying to take a mine that is already producing on a small scale and ramp up its capacity. Before I dive completely into the project I am just trying to do some due diligence and educate myself on the things that are going to cost me a lot of time and investors money.

I have a project manager that is in the gold industry but his specialty is refining and I am not quite sure he can put together what I need to recover the gold. Hopefully I am wrong!! He has given me some solutions to ramp up and I feel that there are different solutions out there that hasn't been explored. His first solution is www.msi-minig.com (which I feel is expensive) and another one was a company called Richfield equipment but I can only find a youtube video on anything they have done:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73APJwbaIc0

Is it possible to find an equipment company that will test you on a small scale? or that will show you equipment they have on mines that are successful at recovering?

We have Assays done from several sources but none of them are my source. If you know what I mean! In your opinion how important is this? I have seen the assays from the current miner and the landowner which are from different sources and they both seem to be different in values but close. I have also seen old assays that are 10 and 20 years old that include topo maps that specify the sample site location on the property. Having said that I have full intention to have my own done but after reading some of the comments above I am wondering what would best suite me. Do I get a geologist or do I get someone to do the Assay or do I do both? What is both going to cost me and how soon can I get something like that lined up. We are planning on taking a trip to the mine next week and I am wondering if it is possible to get it done by then? We would be meeting in Salt Lake City, Utah and leaving from there. Does anyone know anyone in the Salt Lake City Area that could accomplish one or both of these tasks?

I am curious as to what is happening to the Gold Rush Alaska guys? 

I appreciate and value every response 

Thanks again for all your help


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## butcher (Nov 13, 2011)

soogus,

If I had a limited mining experience, or any business, I would not try and ramp up the process.
I would learn on small scale and try and keep the costly education expenses down from the many mistakes my learning curve made. Starting small and grow with gained experience, and as my business made money, then reinvest that. Or pay someone to run the operation that had experience.

if you ask me how important it is for me to take my own test sample's from a claim, and have them assayed independently, for a mine I am going to invest in, or should I just take the assay's the seller showed me to buy equipment and pay for the claim and try and start large scale production. 

This sounds like should I put on a blind fold and walk down the street in Mexico and buy gold rings for top dollar with out seeing the seller or the ring,
Maybe I should just hand them my wallet and let them take as much cash as they think it is worth. Maybe I will be successful in that?

My project manager can do some of the job but I do not feel he can do the recovery part hopefully I am wrong (this could just mean failure is this a big deal?) maybe I could save money and hire the guy at burger king to run my operation?

Where do I give away my hard earned money?

Just joking kind of take off the blind fold you have gold fever.
I could be wrong think about it.


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## sawmill (Nov 13, 2011)

soogus

If you are serious about mining,do not pay any attention to
that Gold Rush Alaska bunch! They are just entertainment for
green horns nothing more. They just give real miners a bad 
name.

I suggested the Alaska Gold Forum,not the Three Stooges.
The reason I suggested the forum is because it is made up of
serious miners,that could give you some real help.


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## soogus (Nov 15, 2011)

Thank you all for your information and help!


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## Dr. Poe (Jan 7, 2012)

Were I in your position, I would consider bringing back the giant floating dredge. The entire mining and refining was done within the dredge. On a much smaller scale: Consider Keene's professional floating dredges. Small towns like Lake Lure, North Carolina purchase and use them for keeping water channels clear for boating. The Army Corp of Engineers can recommend acceptable dredges that pump the slurry to ponds away from the river, insuring no silt contamination to the river.
Before deciding on anything, visit a mining law professional in your state to insure that your actions are both legal and profitable. Dr. Poe


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