Beach Placer

What is The Sea Beach Placer?

Beach placer deposits are secondary enriched deposits formed by the accumulation of heavy mineral debris in the coastal zone by the action of rivers, waves, tides, and currents. It mainly comprises rutile, tantalite, magnetite, xenotime, gold, iron, diamond, quartz, coal, and other minerals.

The abundant seabed mineral resources include beach placer, manganese nodules, and seabed hydrothermal ore. Among them, beach placer deposits are widely distributed in coastal areas and continental shelves of coastal countries. There are dozens of proven beach sand minerals in the world, such as gold, platinum, tin, hafnium, titanium, zirconium, and diamond.

More than 40 countries are engaged in exploring and mining beach sand. For example, the United States mines ilmenite, zircon ore, and gold placer ore from the seashore; Sri Lanka mines seaside tin ore mines; Australian zircon and rutile production mined from the seashore placer account for 60% and 90% of the total world output respectively.

What Are Beach Sand Minerals?

Main types of minerals:

• Metallic minerals, ilmenite, rutile, zircon, magnetite (titanium magnetite);
• Rare metal minerals like cassiterite and niobium tantalite;
• Rare-earth minerals like monazite and xenotime;
• Precious metal minerals like placer gold, diamond, silver, and platinum;
• Non-metallic minerals like quartz sand, shells, amber, etc.

The sea beach sand minerals have great economic value and industry, national defense, and high technology application value.

Beach Placer Deposit Distribution in The World

• The U.S. Northwest Pacific Ocean —— ilmenite, chromite, and zircon;
• Australia and New Zealand —— rutile, zircon, monazite, and ilmenite;
• Southwest Africa —— Diamond placer deposit, associated with gold, platinum, chromite, etc.;
• South southeast Asia, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia —— placer tin deposit;
• India, Sri Lanka —— rutile, zircon, monazite, ilmenite, rare metal;
• Northwest Pacific coast, especially the Japanese archipelago —— magnetite.

There are many useful minerals in seaside placer, but the composition of minerals is complex, and the separation process is complicated. For example, seashore placers include symbiotic monazite, ilmenite, zircon, rutile, etc., requiring multiple beneficiation methods and combined processes to separate the target minerals.

During the mineral separation process of ilmenite, zircon, and rutile, monazite must be separated from them, otherwise, the product quality of zircon, ilmenite, and rutile will be affected, thereby reducing the economic value of raw materials and affecting the company’s profit economic benefits. At the same time, monazite is a kind of rare earth ore. In order to meet the needs of rare earth metallurgical production, the rare earth must be separated from other ores by beneficiation before smelting.

The sorting and recovery of monazite in seashore sand mines are mainly through gravity separation, electric separation, magnetic separation, and other operations to produce monazite products. However, due to the difference in ore properties, some useful minerals are similar in specific gravity and have similar electrical and magnetic properties. For example, some monazite has a magnetic cross phenomenon with minerals such as ilmenite, and the magnetic difference of monazite itself is relatively large. It is difficult to separate it with magnetic separation equipment. Adopt conventional sorting process, there is the problem that the concentrate grade of monazite is low and the recovery rate is low (the total recovery rate is basically 70-75%).

Beach Placer Separation

Mineral Ores: The main useful minerals recovered from a seaside placer are ilmenite, monazite, rutile, porphyrite, etc., and the gangue minerals are mostly quartz.
According to the raw ore properties of seaside placer, the principle process of beneficiation is determined as wet weak, medium magnetic separation, spiral chute, shaking table gravity separation, drying, dry medium magnetic separation, drum simple electric separation, dry strong magnetic separation, sieve plate electric separation Choose an arc plate electric election and so on. Since the titanium minerals are mainly ilmenite, and the dissociation degree of the titanium mineral monomer is high, the magnetic separation method is given priority to recover the ilmenite, and the combined process of wet and dry medium magnetic separation and gravity separation is adopted.

60TPH Zircon Rutile Ilmenite Sand Plant in Ghana

300TPH Beach Black Sand Processing Plant in Sudan

20TPH Tin Ore Processing Plant in Indonesia

100TPH Beach Sand Zircon Mining Plant in Sierra Leone

20TPH Beach Sand Mining Plant in India

10TPH Beach Sand Rutile Refining Plant