Just thinking outside the box here

[arizau]

To begin with.....I am thinking of this configuration for processing ocean beach sand gold though it could work for all feed sources.

What if there was a way that material was introduced into a stream type fluid bed (gold trap) sluice at the rear of the box and the exit ports were situated along the sides more towards the front of the catchment area? A vertical piece at the head and along the sides of the exit ports would isolate and protect them from stream current effecting outflow. One of the sides for each exit port would be the upright piece along the slickplate. I know any configuration of a fluid bed (bazooka, home made, etc.) is capable of trapping gold of all sizes and some better than others. But..... some of the smaller or flatter pieces just zip on by or are otherwise ejected especially in the case of minus 100 mesh beach gold (the subject of this post and virtually all of that gold is minus 100 mesh). With rear entry the introduced material would be forced to reverse direction and subsequently rise slightly uphill before exiting and that could give these troublesome pieces more retention time in the box thus a better chance of settling and being concentrated. Yes, I know preloading the box of a bazooka with coarse material may help fluidization of heavy beach sands/gold capture but there are still inherent inefficiencies and maybe this idea could minimize them.

 

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[DizzyDigger]

Could you draw a diagram of the idea? It would make
much more sense to my easily confused brain...

 

[arizau]

Some of my ideas I want to keep to myself for now but just for simplicity....picture a widthwise scoop that restricts water flow but still forces all properly sized material into the trap and it is located at the sluice's downstream end. With this configuration the underside of the last few inches of the skid plate before the scoop forms the top of the trap. Water flow is restricted to keep from just jetting in and not allowing a fluid bed state to form in the box. The excess water and the lighter suspended solid waste material seek exit (just as they do in a bazooka) but in this instance the exit would be through ports at the vertical top of the chamber, situated along the edges of the chamber roof and the openings would be more to the upstream end of the chamber (pretty far ahead of where the material comes in). The exit ports must be shielded from stream flow so that they drain. If stream water flows over or into them then the box will equalize, the trap will fill and the sluice will stop working.

Other than the exit port the main differences from conventional will be restricted water flow and the material will have to fight gravity to exit. It may also require restricting the feed rate (I plan on pure sand feed so I am used to that) but if it improves recovery I'm golden.