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Fine gold can be easy to miss. A plant may catch the larger flakes, while the smallest particles keep moving with the water or stay locked in another mineral. So which fine gold recovery equipment is worth testing first? Here are four practical options, with the trade-offs you should know before buying one.
These four machines do different jobs. Think of this list as a flowsheet comparison, not a claim that one unit always beats the others. A quick laboratory test can change the order for your ore.
| Equipment | Best role | Main limitation |
|---|---|---|
| Centrifugal concentrator | Recovering liberated fine gold from classified slurry | Needs stable feed and a plan to clean the concentrate |
| Shaking table | Cleaning a smaller gravity concentrate | Limited feed capacity per deck |
| Fine-gold sluice box | Low-cost placer roughing | Fine losses rise when feed or water surges |
| Spiral concentrator | Continuous preconcentration of suitable classified feed | Usually weaker on very fine or flaky gold |
If the gold is already free of the host rock, a centrifugal concentrator is often the first serious test. A rotating bowl increases the separating force. Dense gold particles are held while lighter material leaves with the slurry. This is useful when ordinary gravity equipment lets fine particles escape.
SGS describes centrifugal recovery of free gold below 2 mm during feed preparation, where economical. That is a flowsheet starting point, not a universal recovery guarantee. TOMINE’s TPC800 centrifugal concentrator is published as a continuous machine for feed up to 2 mm and slurry throughput up to 100 m³/h. Ask how those limits apply to your solids content and gold size distribution.
The catch is that a centrifugal unit makes a concentrate, not finished gold. Bowl settings, feed stability, and concentrate handling matter. For exceptionally fine material, specialist high-G units exist, but their performance still needs ore-specific tests.
Best for: liberated fine gold in a grinding circuit or a classified tailings stream.
A shaking table is the machine to watch when you want a cleaner product. A riffled deck moves back and forth while wash water flows across it. The heavy and light particles form visible bands. Operators can adjust the slope, stroke, water, and split points as the feed changes.
The table usually earns its place after a rougher has reduced the mass. Feeding it the whole plant stream can demand too much deck area and attention. TOMINE’s three-deck shaking table includes configurations for fine and ultrafine feeds, but a catalog size range does not tell you how much gold your ore will yield.
Keep the feed narrow and steady. Clay, slimes, and a broad particle-size mix can blur the bands.
Best for: upgrading a centrifugal, sluice, or spiral concentrate before final treatment.
Related article: How to Choose a Shaking Table for Your Mining Line
A sluice is simple: screened, washed material flows along a channel, and gold settles into low-velocity pockets around riffles or matting. That simplicity is valuable at a placer site with modest power and a changing location. It is also why a sluice is easy to misuse. A fast water stream, overloaded riffles, or a clay-rich feed can carry the fine fraction away.
Choose matting and riffle geometry for the actual feed. Then measure the losses, including gold left in the sluice tailings. Do not judge by the visible gold caught during a short run. If the tailings still contain liberated fines, a centrifugal scavenger may be worth testing. A trommel or scrubber can help break clay and remove oversize before the sluice, but it does not replace recovery testing.
Best for: mobile or low-complexity alluvial roughing where feed preparation and water flow can be controlled. It is usually less convincing as the only fine-gold recovery step.
A spiral concentrator separates particles as slurry runs down a helical trough. It has no powered moving parts in the separation channel and can treat a continuous stream. That makes it attractive for preconcentration where the feed is well classified and steady.
Fine gold is where you should be careful. A spiral can recover some liberated gold, but very fine or flaky particles may follow the lighter material. Feed density, particle size, water distribution, and splitter position all change the result.
One practical arrangement uses a spiral to reduce bulk tonnage, then a table to clean its concentrate. Another sends spiral tailings to a centrifugal scavenger. Run both options on the same representative sample before committing to either.
Best for: steady, classified feed where low separator power and continuous roughing matter more than maximum capture of the finest gold.
Related article: Spiral Concentrator vs Centrifugal Concentrator: Which to Choose?
Start with the gold, not the equipment catalog. Ask the laboratory for a size-by-size gold assay and a liberation check. How much is free? How much sits in sulphides? Is the fine fraction flaky? Are clay and slimes masking the separation? Those answers can save you from testing the wrong machine at full scale.
Next, compare machines at a realistic feed rate. Record recovery, concentrate grade, mass pull, water use, and losses in each size fraction. A high recovery number can hide a very large concentrate that is costly to finish. A clean concentrate can also be misleading if too much gold leaves with the tailings.
Finally, compare whole circuits. SGS shows a common path: centrifugal recovery of free gold, followed by a shaking table or intensive treatment for the concentrate.
For placer feed, run a sluice-only baseline, then check whether a centrifugal scavenger recovers gold from its tailings. For hard-rock feed, compare a centrifugal rougher alone with a rougher followed by table cleaning. Keep the feed grade, solids rate, water supply, and sampling method consistent. Otherwise, two test runs can look different for reasons that have nothing to do with the separator. The winning circuit should recover more payable gold at a sensible operating cost, not simply produce the highest number on one short test.
Have a gold-bearing sample and a target capacity? TOMINE can run a beneficiation experiment and compare a centrifugal stage, table cleaning, and other suitable routes. Send us the ore data, and we can build the equipment shortlist around the gold you are actually trying to recover.
Related article: 6 Types of Gravity Separation Equipment in Mining
A centrifugal concentrator is often the first machine to test for liberated fine gold. A shaking table can then clean the smaller concentrate stream.
Usually, it is more efficient as a cleaner because each deck has limited capacity. Test the required number of decks if you want to treat a larger stream directly.
It can catch some, but results depend heavily on feed preparation, water speed, riffles, and matting. Assay the tailings before relying on a sluice alone.
Yes, when the gold is liberated and the feed is well classified. Very fine or flaky gold can still escape, so check spiral tailings by particle size.
