What a Gold Wash Plant Does
A gold wash plant is a gravity recovery plant for placer and alluvial gold. It washes, scrubs and screens the material, then recovers free gold using sluices, jigs or centrifugal concentrators. Unlike hard-rock gold, placer gold is already liberated — it just needs separating from the sand and gravel around it.
What to Check Before You Buy
- Feed type — clay content, particle size and whether the gold is fine or coarse. A high-clay feed needs scrubbing that a simple sluice plant will not handle.
- Throughput — the plant must match your target tonnage, not the seller's headline number.
- Recovery route — sluice, jig or centrifugal concentrator, chosen for the gold size in your deposit.
- Water supply — wash plants are water-hungry; the site must support the water demand.
Why Testwork Still Matters
Even for a placer deposit, a quick characterisation of the material — gold size, clay content, grade — prevents buying the wrong plant. A plant bought on guesswork leaves gold in the tailings regardless of the equipment's marketing.
New vs Used
A new wash plant is engineered to your material and carries a warranty; a used plant may be cheaper but comes with unknown wear and a flowsheet matched to someone else's deposit. For a commercial operation, the cost of mismatched equipment usually exceeds the saving.