Non-metallic Minerals - Washing and Sizing Sand and Gravel

In the year just past there were produced in the United States about 170,000,000 tons of sand and gravel. Much of this was pit-run material used for gravelling roads and as railroad ballast on lines that did not carry heavy traffic. But more than half of it was marketed as washed and sized, or graded, material. The methods used for preparing sand and gravel for the market have long been used in ore dressing and, as in ore dressing, depend on differences in the specific gravity of two substances or in the size or weight of particles. But many changes in the design and operation of plants and machines have been necessary. In ore dressing, the concentrate is only a small part of the feed; in sand and gravel washing, it is much the larger part of the feed. In addition, such close work as is needed when concentrating a metallic ore is not needed when washing gravel; the ability to put through a large tonnage is more important, and sizing, which is only a preliminary process in ore dressing, is an end to be attained. Rock crushers are found in most sand and gravel plants and they are used to break up the larger pieces from the deposit (known as boulders and cobbles) which are removed by a scalping screen. The crusher discharge is usually sent back to the scalping screen, the perforations in this screen setting the maximum size of the finished product. Washing Washing is to prepare sand and gravel so that they may be used as aggregates in concrete and wall plaster and in various processes in which impurities would harm the product. At one end of the scale of washed materials may stand ordinary concrete sand, which in some states may contain as much as 3 per cent, of clay and still be used in highway concrete construction. At the other end will stand the silica sand used for making plate glass, which must be washed so clean that the impurities that can be removed by washing do not exceed a few hundredths of a per cent. The methods and machinery that would produce one of these