What is "Placer Mining"?

It is important to add that Placer Mining is an environment friendly mining method. Evidently many countries and mining companies don't recycle the water removed and thus damage the environment, but Placer Mining can be realized in a way which causes minimal environmental damage. It is also better to conduct Placer Mining in settling ponds than in running streams, where the produced silt can make the streams much less clean.

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The name really doesn't seem to make sense, but it actually comes from Spanish, where "placer" means shoal or sandbank. Placer Mining is basically mining of alluvial deposits of precious metals, mined in stream beds. Gold is often mined in this method. The actual mining can be conducted in several different methods: Hydraulic mining, tunneling or surface excavating. In more detail, there are a few common methods for extracting gold from placers:

• Panning  or Sluice Box - A huge metal (or plastic) pan is used to extract gold from the placer. Gold density is higher than water, so the gold particles sink to the pan's bottom. Sand (or mud) is later washed away, leaving the gold particles isolated and ready to be used. A sluice box is used in a quite similar fashion. The bottom part has barriers that allows small particles to be washed out while gold remains inside the box.  
• Trommel - This is a tool based on a rotating metal tube with a filter in its end. The filter, along with the inner scrubber section, screen valuable particles apart from the main ore once water is inserted.
  

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