Heavy Media Bath

Heavy media gravity separation involves using a mixture of fine media material, such as magnetite (SG 5.1) or ferrosilicon (SG 6.8), suspended in a slurry of water, to produce a media slurry with a specific gravity that will allow low density material(s) to float, and other high density material(s) to sink. T he SG of separation is the SG of the media slurry, and can range from 1.45 (for coal), to around 2.8 (for diamonds). The separation principal is very simple, if the "liquid" media has a SG of 2.5, every mineral with a SG greater than 2.5 will sink and those lighter than 2.5 will rise to the top and float.