Hydraulic classifiers are provided for sorting material using injected water. Some embodiments include upper and lower housings having different cross-sectional shapes. In some embodiments, certain improvements are provided for cleanout and/or removal or replacement of teeter bars.

Described is a process for the refinement of a quartz powder, comprising the step of separating microparticles of refractory minerals, in particular minerals containing rare earth metal compounds, from the quartz powder by an elutriation step.

The present invention relates to a silicon powder, where the size of the silicon powder particles are between 3 and 30 m, a particle size fraction D10 of the silicon powder particles is between 3 and 9 m, and where the silicon powder particles have no, or substantially no, silicon particles with a size smaller than D10 attached to the surface. The silicon powder according to the present invention is produced by wet classifying produced silicon powders.

This disclosure relates to a bottom section for being connected to an assembly for separating a solid component from a fluid. The assembly includes an inclined plate settler with at least one sedimentation channel for letting a solid component to be separated settle, said plate settler comprising a lower portion and an upper portion, wherein said at least one sedimentation channel extends from the lower portion to the upper portion. The bottom section is configured to be connected to the lower portion of the inclined plate settler. The bottom section comprises at least one inlet channel for feeding a fluid comprising the solid component to be separated to the plate settler, and at least one collection channel for collecting a settled solid component descending from the at least one sedimentation channel. Said at least one inlet channel and said at least one collection channel are fluidly separated from each other, said inlet channel and said collection channel being connectable to said at least one sedimentation channel, to form fluid connections between said at least one inlet channel and said at least one sedimentation channel and between said at least one collection channel and said at least one sedimentation channel, respectively.

Provided is a gravity separation device wherein occurrences of shelving, flashing, and the like inside the device can be suppressed, variations in the flow rate of underflow obtained by gravity separation can be minimized and underflow can be stably extracted. This gravity separation device, which separates overflow and underflow using differences in specific gravity from mixed material, is provided with a separation section that has a supply pipe for supplying a slurry of the mixed material at the top and separates that slurry into overflow and underflow, and a deposition section that is positioned below the separation section and wherein the underflow that has been separated by precipitation is deposited. An extraction pipe for extracting the underflow is connected to the deposition section, and a valve for extracting the underflow and a metering pump for quantitatively extracting the underflow are provided in the extraction pipe.

This invention relates to an inverted up-flow separator, its use in a method of recovering target mineral particles from tailings and a process for the recovery of target mineral particles from tailings using the inverted up-flow separator of the invention.

An apparatus for processing aggregate material includes a chassis, a trough mounted on the chassis at an inclined angle, and at least one shaft rotatably mounted within the trough and extending from a lower to an upper end of the trough. The at least one shaft has blades mounted thereon, the blades being angled so that they carry material within the trough towards the upper end of the trough when the at least one shaft is in a normal direction of rotation. A discharge opening is formed in a base of the trough adjacent the upper end of the trough, a weir being provided in the trough upstream of the discharge opening over which processed material must pass to reach the discharge opening.

A method of separating a shell from a seed may involve introducing a feed stream containing shells of a fruit intermixed with seeds of the fruit into a separation column at a feed stream location. The method may also involve introducing a first volume of a separation liquid into the separation column at a first liquid addition location located below the feed stream location and a second volume of the separation liquid into the separation column at a second liquid addition location located above feed stream location. The separation liquid may flow upwardly in the separation column at a rate effective to cause the seeds of the fruit to flow upwardly with the separation liquid toward a seed outlet of the separation column while the shells of the fruit flow downwardly against the upwardly flowing separation liquid toward a shell outlet of the separation column.

A compact hydraulic particle separator apparatus is disclosed. The disclosed apparatus comprises an upper chamber and a lower chamber separated by a partition. A liquid fluid flow upwelling through the partition from the lower chamber is caused to mix with tangential jet of fluid flowing introduced above the partition in the upper chamber produces an upwardly-flowing cyclonic flow within the upper chamber. Particle mixtures containing low- and high-density particles and other solids are introduced into the upper chamber through a feed tube having a mouth that is offset from the center of the upper chamber. Low-density particles are immediately entrained in the cyclonic flow and swept upward and exit the apparatus.

A cyclonic separation and materials processing method and system is presented in which materials entry at one end and which is arranged so that the materials that enter will be given a tangential velocity component as they enter. Specific embodiments include a three-dimensional sorting system with the use of an outward centrifugal motion and up/down (or vertical) motion flow of water or other media, which can be thought of as a three-dimensional separation.