Patent ID: 11865548
Assignee: OREKINETICS INVESTMENTS PTY LTD
Field: Chemical engineering (Chemistry)
Classification: CPC B | IPC B

Claim 17:
18. A spiral trough for use in a spiral separator for providing at least partial separation of a first species and a second species by wet gravity separation, the spiral trough comprising:
a more upstream region, the more upstream region comprising a slurry feed region adapted, in use, to receive a feed slurry comprising a mix of said first species and said second species from a feed arrangement of said spiral separator; and
a more downstream region, adapted to be provided in said spiral separator with a splitting arrangement provided at or immediately adjacent the more downstream region, to split a concentrated band of the first species from the rest of the flow in the spiral trough;
wherein the more upstream region of the spiral trough has a trough floor region, and provides an effective cross-trough floor slope relative to the horizontal, which reduces from between 15 and 20 degrees to a cross-trough floor angle of between 10 degrees and 14 degrees;
wherein the more downstream region of the spiral trough has a trough floor region having an effective cross-trough floor angle which reduces to between 4 degrees and 8 degrees, relative to the horizontal, immediately adjacent a downstream end of the spiral trough; and
wherein the trough provides an effective cross-trough floor slope which reduces between the more upstream region and the more downstream region, and wherein the reduction in effective cross-trough floor slope in a turn at the downstream region of the spiral trough is provided by the pitch of a more radially outer region of the spiral trough and the pitch of a more radially inner region of the trough being different over said turn of the spiral trough, and wherein the difference in pitch over said turn is between 0.08 and 0.18 times the radial distance between said more radially outer region and said more radially inner region.