Patent ID: 7318528

Claim:
In a method of recovering metals from a mineral deposit wherein the metals are embedded, the steps of: providing a tank with water therein; depositing the mineral deposit within the tank; generating an electrical pulse that causes an explosive fragmentation of the under water deposit within the tank, thereby forming a fragmented rock and metal mixture; removing the mixture from the tank; providing an apparatus for sorting the metals comprising: means for conveying the mixture from the tank to a sorting location; a conditioning electromagnet at the sorting location to temporarily magnetize the metals of the mixture; and a plurality of collection electromagnets; positioning each collection electromagnet at a known vertical distance from the mixture and positioning each subsequent collection electromagnet at a lesser vertical distance than a previous collection electromagnet; magnetizing the metals with the conditioning electromagnet; attracting a plurality of metals in the mixture with the plurality of collection electromagnets, each metal having a different magnetization level and being attracted to only one of the plurality of collection electromagnets; and collecting each of the plurality of metals.