Using gravity concentration to optimize gold recovery is now a necessity in today’s competitive mineral industry. 

At Sepro, our goal is to help you squeeze out every ounce of gold from your recovery circuit. While froth flotation and cyanide leaching both play major roles in gold recovery, the benefits of using gravity concentrators cannot be understated. As a low-cost addition to any circuit, it helps optimize the recovery process and mitigates processing risks due to ore variability.

Here are just a few advantages of adding gravity concentrators to your recovery circuit. 

Low CAPEX and OPEX Costs

Gravity concentration has a lower overall cost per ounce produced compared to cyanide leaching and froth flotation. Not only is the equipment cheaper to purchase, it’s also less expensive to run on a day-to-day basis.

Froth flotation and cyanide leaching both require costly reagents for optimal gold recovery. The type, ratio, and quantity of reagents needs to be optimized for every ore, and variability in the ore or poor reagent optimization can lead to poor recovery rates. 

None of our Falcon Gravity Concentrators require any added chemical reagents, which saves you money. 

Our Falcon UF and C models require no additional process water to operate. The Falcon SB Gravity Concentrator does use fluidization water in limited amounts, but our R&D team is working to reduce, and ultimately eliminate, any additional process water consumption during operation. 

Reducing chemical consumption whenever possible gives the added benefit of being more environmentally friendly. Remember, every little bit counts. 

Low Circuit Lockup

Other things being equal, the faster you produce gold, the more profitable you become.

If your current cyanidation process takes days or even weeks to extract gold, your gold production has the potential to be sped up. Slow recovery means that hundreds of thousands of dollars are just sitting in your circuit, constraining your operation’s cash flow. Stop limiting the amount of gold you could be recovering and speed it up!

Gravity concentrators produce gold from ore in a matter of minutes or hours rather than days or weeks. By introducing concentrators into your circuit, you can experience faster recovery times, allowing you to produce gold more quickly, which in turn improves your cash flow. 

Process Optimization

The most effective way for cyanide leaching and froth flotation to work is with a homogeneous ore. The amount of reagents you add to these processes is dependent on the gold grade. If the ore grade fluctuates, you won’t have a predictable feed, and recovery will be poor. 

Every time the ore grade changes, the reagents need to be optimized for this different grade but sometimes the grade can vary rapidly.  If the grade rises quickly, say three or four times the average, you may not be able to optimize the reagents fast enough, resulting in lost gold and profits. 

Since even the smallest changes in these systems can have significant large scale consequences, it is vital to do everything in your power to maximize gold recovery. 

Gravity concentrators pull out free gold that typically causes high-grade variation. What you’re left with is a consistent feed grade for downstream processes. This makes it easier to predict and optimize the reagent ratios for cyanidation and froth flotation. 

Mitigation Of Your Gold Recovery Risk

Sometimes, there just isn’t a lot of gravity recoverable gold available in a given material. Unfortunately, this leads people to believe that the investment in gravity concentrators is not worth the benefit. However, when dealing with these situations, gravity concentrators can still be effective at mitigating risk at a low cost. 

Almost all gold ore grades fluctuate and are susceptible to the nugget effect. If gold particles cluster in specific locations and leave gangue everywhere else, there can be a wide variation in sample test results. It can be very difficult for gold mining operations to prepare their reagents for optimal gold recovery. Do you prepare a batch for high-grade or low-grade recovery? Perhaps you spend time and resources on extra tests and switching out reagents. There are better strategies.  

Using gravity concentrators can help mitigate the nugget effect by extracting the gravity recoverable gold (if there is any), leaving a homogeneously graded material ready for downstream processing. If there isn’t any gravity recoverable gold, you can be sure that you’ll get the best recovery from your chemical processes. Either way, you’ll be happy you had a gravity concentrator in your circuit. 

We Are The Gravity Concentrator Experts

Sepro has roots deep in the history of gravity concentration technology. We started with the B-bowl and has evolved into three models, each with their own specific uses and functions. 

Our Falcon Gravity Concentrators have been used as part of gold recovery operations around the globe, with some of our most recent projects at TMAC Resources in Nunavut and Atlantic Gold in Nova Scotia. TMAC Resources has recently been able to turn a profit after continuously achieving record-breaking gold recovery rates. Atlantic Gold’s Moose River Project is a fairly new operation that Sepro has had the pleasure of helping optimize.

Interested to learn more about gravity concentration and the Falcon line of concentrators? Speak with one of our experts to get started. And remember, no other piece of equipment improves downstream processes at such a low cost as gravity concentrators.

Interested to learn more about gravity concentration and the Falcon line of concentrators? Speak with one of our experts to get started. And remember, no other piece of equipment improves downstream processes at such a low cost as gravity concentrators.