Brian Crocker on sun 23 may 99
Dear CLAYARTISTS,
Is there any one out there who knows how to separate Ilmenite from Sand
by Elutration [controlled jet of air] or other methods ??
Kind regards to all,
Brian C..
Brian Crocker.
4 Erica Street,
Tea Tree Gully 5091,
South Australia. [e.mail] crocker@dove.net.au
With them the Seed of Wisdom did I sow,
And with my own hand labour'd it to grow:
And this was all the Harvest that I reap'd --
"I came like Water, and like Wind I go." The Rubaiyat.
June Perry on mon 24 may 99
A magnet will do it. Places that sell gold mining accessories sell a little
gadget that will do this. Basically, it's a plastic case with a round (about
3")magnet at the bottom, with a plunger arrangement. Or, you could save some
money and glue a bunch of small magnets onto a piece of scrap plywood and
make a little makeshift handle out of a piece of doweling or scrap wood.
Regards,
June
Michael Banks on mon 24 may 99
Brian, The choice of best method would depend quite a lot on the grainsize
of the ilmenite in question, the raw concentration, the scale required and
the availability of water. I'm mostly assuming you only want a few kg.
If you have a water supply at the site, wifley table or super-panner, or
even a gold dish would do the trick. Super panners are available in a range
or sizes and may be a good choice for kilogram-size samples. Several
Australian companies used to manufacture small scale table or jig set-ups,
suitable for ute or trailer transport. They may still do so. An internet
search should come up with something. Larger-scale wet ilmenite primary
recovery is usually done with spirals.
Dry methods include dryblowing, air-elutriation and yandi dish. Small-scale
commercial dry-blowing set-ups may still be manufactured, particularly in
W.A. Dry-blowing was commonly used for gold recovery in the Eastern
Goldfields of Western Australia in years gone by. But I've never seen this
done or air-elutriation either. I have seen Aboriginal people using yandies
in the Pilbara district to recover cassiterite though.
A yandi is elliptical shallow dish held into the breeze, partly filled with
the pay-dirt and shaken upwards in a fluid motion. An expert yandi operator
has the sand in an almost continuous vertical cascade above the dish. The
breeze floats the light-mineral sand off to one side, leaving a
heavy-mineral concentrate in the dish. It should work for ilmenite if there
are no other abundant heavy minerals present of similar specific gravity,
e.g. zircon. However zircon and ilmenite can often be separated in a gold
dish as a last stage clean-up, using a bucket of water, which can be
recycled. The only other heavies (over 4.5 S.G.) which may be present are
rutile, monazite or xenotime, which may or may not be a problem. The last
two may not colour a glaze too much, just make it radio-active....
Michael Banks,
Nelson,
New Zealand
----------------------------Original message----------------------------
Dear CLAYARTISTS,
Is there any one out there who knows how to separate Ilmenite from Sand
by Elutration [controlled jet of air] or other methods ??
(snip) Brian Crocker.
Michael Banks on wed 26 may 99
June,
I think you may be confusing ilmenite (FeTiO3) with magnetite (Fe3O4).
Ilmenite only has a weak response to a hand-magnet, magnetite can easily be
lifted by one. Magnetite often contains a significant ulvospinel (Fe2TiO4)
component. But these titanomagnetites do not produce the same result as
ilmenite in a glaze.
Either magnetite, ilmenite, or both can be a constituent of "blacksand".
Both are visually nearly indistinguishable to the layman as fine sand
grains, without magnification. Ilmenites weak ferromagnetic response means
that it is more practical to separate it from sand using gravity methods, in
the low-tech arena. Powerful industrial electrmagnets can separate
extremely weakly magnetic minerals, but these generate vastly more powerful
fields than is possible with a hand magnet.
Michael Banks,
Nelson,
New Zealand
------------Original message----------------------------
>A magnet will do it. Places that sell gold mining accessories sell a little
>gadget that will do this. Basically, it's a plastic case with a round
(about
>3")magnet at the bottom, with a plunger arrangement. Or, you could save
some
>money and glue a bunch of small magnets onto a piece of scrap plywood and
>make a little makeshift handle out of a piece of doweling or scrap wood.
>
>Regards,
>June
>
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