Gemstone Sand Ore Gravity Separation Solutions

Stage 1: Gentle Washing & Screening

Gemstones are often locked inside sticky laterite clay that must be dissolved without crushing the stones.

• Rotary Scrubbing: Raw ore enters a Rubber-Lined Rotary Scrubber. High-pressure water sprays aggressively break down the clay and clean surface adherents from the stones. The thick rubber lining acts as a shock absorber, preventing the gems from cracking against the steel drum.
• Vibrating Screening: The washed material is graded by a double-deck vibrating screen into specific size fractions (+5mm, 5-2mm, 2-0.5mm, and -0.5mm).
• Hand-Sorting (+5mm): The largest fraction (+5mm) is routed to a slow-moving conveyor belt. Workers manually pick out large gemstone crystals and discard large waste rocks, maximizing the value of the largest stones.

Stage 2: Gravity Enrichment System

The graded, washed gravel is sent to specific gravity separators based on particle size to separate the heavy gems from the light quartz gravel.

• Jigging (5mm - 0.5mm): The medium-grained gravel enters the Jigger. The pulsating water bed easily stratifies the material, catching the dense gemstones while rejecting the lighter vein minerals.
• Spiral Concentration (-0.5mm): The finest grains (often containing garnet sand or microscopic corundum) are recovered by Fiberglass Spiral Concentrators, heavily reducing the loss of fine-grained values.
• Table Selection: The rough concentrates from the jigs are passed over 6-S Shaking Tables for final, high-precision visual sorting.

Stage 3: Tailings & Water Recycling

After sorting, the barren tailings are dewatered and safely stockpiled or used for mine backfill. Because this process uses zero chemicals, process water is aggressively recycled through thickeners, ensuring a water recycling rate of > 85% and vastly reducing operating costs.

• Crystal Protection: 100% physical sorting method maximizes the protection of gemstone crystal integrity (no crushers).
• High-Efficiency Recovery: The Jig + Shaker combination adapts to full-grain sorting, achieving 85% - 95% recovery for Gemstone-Grade products (0.5-30mm).
• Industrial-Grade Recovery: Achieves 90% - 98% recovery for industrial abrasives (-5mm Garnet/Corundum).
• Extremely Low OPEX: Power consumption is only 1/3 of heavy media beneficiation plants.

Q1: How do you prevent breaking large Rubies or Sapphires during washing?

A: This is the most critical aspect of gemstone plant design. Standard rotary scrubbers use bare steel drums; when large rocks tumble inside, they can easily fracture fragile crystals. Our Gemstone Rotary Scrubbers are lined with thick, industrial-grade rubber. This rubber lining acts as a shock absorber, gently breaking down the clay while ensuring the high-value crystals remain perfectly intact.

Q2: Why do you include a hand-sorting stage?

A: Gemstones over 5mm (+5mm) hold immense commercial value as individual specimen pieces or jewelry cuts. Rather than risking these large stones in mechanical jigs or tables, we route the oversized, washed gravel onto a slow-moving picking belt. Trained workers visually identify and manually extract the largest rubies and sapphires immediately, ensuring zero mechanical loss of your most valuable inventory.

End-to-End Gemstone Processing Engineering Services

If you have a ruby, sapphire, or garnet alluvial mining project, GravityMineral provides professional, economical, and highly reliable turnkey solutions.

• Program Design: Customized flowsheet and site layout planning based on the nature of your ore.
• Equipment Supply: Supplying a full set of rubber-lined washers, screens, and gravity separators.
• Installation & Training: On-site engineers to guide installation, tune recovery parameters, and train operators in gemstone handling.

Contact our technical team today to receive a customized gemstone wash plant layout and equipment quotation.