The sluicebox—an evaluation

This paper reviews the recent research on sluiceboxes, and based on this, presents a unified analysis of their behaviour. The available laboratory data suggests that substantially lower dA,50ʹs could be obtained in commercial units. To obtain these low, competitive dA,50ʹs, throughput must be reduced, and feed top sizes reduced. Given that most placer deposits have only a limied range of gold particle sizes, these conditions are realistically obtainable. arison of laboratory and plant data on gold sluiceboxes suggests that to perform successfully, it must achieve four processes: 1. iver gold particles to the plane of the riffles ll gold particles into the riffles old gold particles in the riffles, in preference to other minerals ansport gangue minerals along and off the sluice. e of these processes can be performance limiting. Under carefully controlled conditions, dA,50ʹs of the order of 50μm may be possible—a performance similar to that obtained on a spiral. considered desirable that operators make an effort to determine the size distribution of the gold in their operations, and a method for determining this is proposed.