Anyone Have Any Experience With The Quicksand Concentrator?

[John-Edmonton]

I figured this forum is busy and a great place to throw this out.

It sells for $99.00, and the science behind it sounds reasonable.  Screening your material and controlling the water flow should allow the user to tweak it up to a functional level. It's been out for about 5 years, yet has few videos, many good comments, but some not so good ones. I only have lots of flour gold where I live, and am looking for an affordable' simple tool to reduce my concentrates at the end of my season, to then  run them through a second time, then through my miller table. Below is a link to the product:

 

Any comments would greatly be appreciated.

 

John-Edmonton

 

[Steve Herschbach]

On 11/11/2019 at 11:32 AM, John-Edmonton said:

I figured this forum is busy and a great place to throw this out.

It sells for $99.00, and the science behind it sounds reasonable.  Screening your material and controlling the water flow should allow the user to tweak it up to a functional level. It's been out for about 5 years, yet has few videos, many good comments, but some not so good ones. I only have lots of flour gold where I live, and am looking for an affordable' simple tool to reduce my concentrates at the end of my season, to then  run them through a second time, then through my miller table. Any comments would greatly be appreciated.

John-Edmonton

You know what, for $99 I like it John. Most stuff like this is way overpriced. This is a variation on the classic but rare vertical recovery column; I will find some references and post later. The key here is the screening is critical, no mixed sizes.

As far as how good this one is the little surges are concerning, they indicate an unevenness of flow. A perfect design has a vertical column of water moving upward with no surging. This has a very small area, barely enough to be called a vertical column really, and the surging would indicate some possibility of blowing out finer gold. I’m sure it’s fine for anything of a coarser nature.

The main thing is this does not separate the gold, it just is a first run to create a super concentrate. So like reduce a bucket of light concentrate to a few cups of concentrate. A gold wheel can take you from the bucket to relatively clean gold, not perfect, some loss, but good for large dredges in particular. A gold bowl or a miller table like you have is a better device for working the actual super cons. For taking a large volume, like buckets of dredge or sluice results down to a super concentrate I’d personally prefer some of the little mini sluice concentrators over this device. Like the Gold Cube or Keene Super Concentrator.

A classic vertical column goes like this. Imagine a piece of 4” PVC a foot long sitting on end. At the bottom is a fine sieve. Water is forced through the sieve to rise through the tube in a very smooth flow that can be calibrated by increasing or decreasing the flow. The material is carefully screened and added to the tube. The light material rises up and out and the heavies collect at the bottom.

The problem of course is the heavies build up and cover the bottom, requiring constant cleaning. So a bright boy added a pulsator that made the accumulated concentrate jump up and down and stay loose. And now you know how the jig was invented!  

Still neat and simple  for $99 though. My real concern is it might blow out the super fine gold. From the eBay page:

 

Regular Quicksand Gold Concentrator Made in the U.S.A.

Superior Gold Recovery, Doesn't need to be level

Run 1/8 inch Material or smaller as Fast as you can scoop

Pump not included 

The Quicksand Gold Concentrator was developed to get concentrates or screened material down to a Super Concentrate faster that other equipment. This is not a blue bowl, so don't run it like one. 

Set up the Quicksand in a tub to recirculate the water or on the bank with the pump in the water. 500gph 12 volt bilge pump works the best for speed and recovery. 

Cleanout the Quicksand by turning it over a pan or tub and turn on the pump to wash out material. Then Pan out the cups of Super Concentrate. 

Made in the U.S.A. by R.C.M. Ent and US Prospector. 

[Steve Herschbach]

Finally found it. The technical term is “elutriation”. Elutriation is a process for separating a mixture of minerals into two or more products and utilizes the difference in settling velocity between particles to effect this separation.

The link below has a manual that starts out all technical but the tells you how to build a simple device with a 55 gallon drum or I assume 5 gallon bucket that would work better than our $99 device above.

From https://scholarworks.alaska.edu/handle/11122/1149.

This manual addresses the design and fabrication of an elutriation system for the separation of coarse heavy minerals from waste rock. Elutriation is a process for separating a mixture of minerals into two or more products and utilizes the difference in settling velocity between particles to effect this separation. An upward flow of water runs countercurrent to the material flow in a hollow elutriation column. Particle separation is affected by particle density, size and shape and the upward water velocity. It was felt that the design and demonstration of a low cost, functional and efficient unit for the concentration of coarse, heavy minerals would be of benefit to the placer mining industry. Industrial efficiency can be improved by the additional recovery of byproduct heavy minerals with market potential. Elutriation provides an inexpensive method for processing +1/4 inch, sluice box concentrate to recover by-product heavy minerals. Elutriator design emphasized the use of materials which are inexpensive and readily available to the average placer gold mining company. The design also incorporated concentrate storage and shipment functionality into a detachable section of the elutriator. Design is based on the construction of a prototype unit and testing of the unit for coarse cassiterite (Sn02) recovery efficiency. Laboratory testing utilized 3/4" x 3/16" sluice box concentrate from Shoreham Resources Ltd's Cache Creek Mine, Tofty, Alaska. Following laboratory testing, the elutriator was field tested on-site in September, 1990. Both laboratory and field testing were highly successful. The elutriator proved to be a simple, robust concentrator for this application and produced tin recoveries and grades in excess of 99% and 55% respectively. Field feed grades to the elutriation unit were approximately 26% tin.

[Hard Prospector]

I've got one and it works. Just don't let it "boil" and it won't loose gold.  Installing  an in line ball valve will regulate flow.

 A mini sluice concentrator is more effective and practical though as you can run 1/4" as well as 1/8" material.

[johnedoe]

Fine gold can be a real challenge especially at cleanup time.

I beach mine when I can so fine gold is all I deal with.

The problem with elutriation of fine gold is that the black sands are competing with the gold  the reason is the black sands are as a rule round in shape and fine gold has many different surface configurations which is mostly more flat... This gives it a real kite like action in the upwelling of the elutriation tube water.

 

Something you may find more useful and efficient would be something like the video of the fine gold cleanup slice video below.

If you have more questions I will be happy to answer if I can. you might look over my thread here as well, there maybe some helpful hints...  

 

[OFS]

Hi John

I am in Edmonton as well and unfortunately the fine flour gold that we have as well as the Corey Shape Factor make the Quick Sand a poor choice for us.

[johnedoe]

Doc at Gold Hog has a pretty good video about how shape, size, slope, and water flow effect material handling called Proportional Force.

Give it a watch and you can see how these things all interact... While it deals mainly with running material in a sluice the concept is clear and you can see how it would work in an elutriation column as well.