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Placer mining (/ ˈ p l æ s ər /) [1] is the mining of stream bed deposits for minerals. [2] This may be done by open-pit mining or by various surface excavating equipment or tunneling equipment.
Placer mining, ancient method of using water to excavate, transport, concentrate, and recover heavy minerals from alluvial or placer deposits. Examples of deposits mined by means of this technique are the gold-bearing sands and gravel that settle out from rapidly moving streams and rivers at points.
Unlike hardrock mining, which extracts veins of precious minerals from solid rock, placer mining is the practice of separating heavily eroded minerals like gold from sand or gravel. The word placer is thought to have come from Catalan and Spanish, meaning a shoal or sand bar.
Placers are unconsolidated deposits of detrital material containing valuable minerals. The natural processes by which they form range from chemical weathering to stream, marine, and wind action.
Placer mining involves extracting minerals from alluvial deposits, such as sand and gravel bars in rivers or streams. While this method has been used for centuries to extract valuable resources like gold, silver, and platinum, it also comes with its fair share of risks and drawbacks.
Placer gold is gold that has broken loose from the main lode, as a result of weathering and erosion. Placers can be found both close to and far from the gold lode, depending on the forces at play. One example is placer gold that gets into a river, where it can travel thousands of miles downstream.
In geology, a placer deposit or placer is an accumulation of valuable minerals formed by gravity separation from a specific source rock during sedimentary processes. [1] The name is from the Spanish word placer, meaning "alluvial sand".
Placer mining is a collection of mining methods that use water to separate valuable ore from the surrounding sediment. Placer mining literally began as a flash in the pan, flecks of gold awash in a slurry of sediment, recovered by miners using a skilled hand with only a pan the size of a dinner plate and river water.
Mining a Placer. You don’t need to be a geologist to find a placer deposit. Placers were mined in pre-history; it is, after all, simply a matter of tripping over nuggets from the river! The pattern with many placer mining areas is the original deposits were quickly found and exploited.
Placer deposit, natural concentration of heavy minerals caused by the effect of gravity on moving particles. When heavy, stable minerals are freed from their matrix by weathering processes, they are slowly washed downslope into streams that quickly winnow the lighter matrix.