Gold and elements of the platinum group metals have been found in several types of deposits around the world. Sometimes, deposits have been worked for their cobble and gravel components and these places have been set up to recover heavy minerals (mainly as black sands) from their host rock. These minerals carry precious metals and they can be recovered by gravimetric devices such as shaking tables or centrifugal concentrators. Most the time, quartz, garnet, pyrite, magnetite, hematite, zircon and monazite are found in these deposits and they can be concentrated by any gravimetric equipment. Try to understand the genesis of each deposit and the minerals present is a very important aspect that must be considered in the extraction process to be used to recover gold.

Mineralogy can be influenced by gold particle size, non-valuable minerals, type of non-ferrous metals, and existence of disseminated or agglomerated gold particles. The factors mentioned play a very important role in the recovery of gold. One condition very important is the particle size because the selection of one or multiple processes is conditioned to the particle size.

                                                     Horse Canyon Mine                                                                                   Vein of gold bearing quartz