Hi, this is Jeff with Mt. Baker Mining and Metals
and today we are in Migori Kenya
recently we commissioned a shaker table here
to the MICA cooperative, which is a gold mining cooperative
for small scale artisnal miners
and they have been running it for a couple of months now
and today we are here to follow up with them as well as some other people joining us on trip
To get the feedback on how its working
in particular compared to the traditional methods of concentrating
using sluice boxes and amalgamation of mercury.
Hello, I am Solomon of Migori Kenya and operator of this shaker table in Migori
Starting without we have been doing it manually usually before the shaker table came
we could extract the ore from the mines
using chisels and hammers
after that crush to pebbles manually
than they are taken to the ball mills
That grinds the ore to not very fine
that is when they take them to a board
with your size of sack, after you spread your size of sack
That is when you start running your slurry
of the concentrates and than after that
you remove the
concentrates will stick on the side of the sacks
by shaking the sacks
after shaking the sacks the person will remain in the basin where your shaking them
After that, they are taken to the ponds next to them
After that mercury is used to amalgamate gold.
after that as you
as you do the amalgamation thing
Take the mercury that has attracted gold because it does attract gold
You put it in a linen cloth
than you squeeze, the remaining amalgam
inside the gold as the mercury gets out
Though not all of it, some will remain
inside the linen cloth
as part of the amalgam
and by then the mercury , the gold
will assume the color of the mercury
So went its sent to the market
it is heated to get rid of the rest of the mercury
it will begin to give back the color of the mercury.
The true color of gold
and after that take it and go sell it for 3,000 Kenyan shillings per gram
okay, comparing the recovery
with the recovery of the shaker table
I come to find that
The shaker table
recovers up to twice as much gold as the local way
Hello, My Name Paul Cordy, I am a mining engineer from Canada
I have worked around the world with Artisnal Mininers.
and I have seen all sorts of processing techniques
and different modern techniques that have been applied to artisnal mining
Some successful, some not
All have there limitations
One thing that I'm very impressed with Mt. Baker Mining Equipment
fineness of the gold they can capture with the shaker table.
Previously I understand that
a shaker table can only capture to a fineness of gold
except in the case of the Gemini table.
which is quite a expensive piece of equipment.
So I am happy that
at the price artisanal miners can afford
There is now piece of equipment that can catch that fine of gold
but this also does a whole lot of material as well
a lot of people advocate centrifuges
certainly I have see that apply in as lot of cases
but all too often
The controller box malfunctions or the ore is not processed sufficiently well
for that kind of machine to be useful
in some cases the water isn't clean enough so it blocks the pores
A nice simple piece of equipment is much better adapted to
the particular case of artisnal mining
where they don't necessarily have access to maintenance or repair services.
for more complex machinery and
this shaker table like this
nice and easy to operate
it's durable and simple to optimize and level
and to operate
it's going to be really advantageous for people in my line of work
who try to help artisnal miners
to improve recovery at an effective cost
Here we have some ore being fed onto the table
it gets down into the feeding trough and then down into the grooves
and any light waste material
works it's way down into the tailings port
which feeds a few settling ponds here
and than water is re-circulated from that pond back to the table
so it's a closed loop system, so there is no water lost
and occasionally this small pond here is excavated.
and there is a small pile of tailings
All the dense material, the gold and the silver, sulfides, ect.
sinks into the grooves and works it's way to the high grade area of the table
there is no bump or jerk with the table
it's a smooth cyclical motion that creates less agitation in the slurry
and also results in finer gold recovery
Based on reports from miners here who have been using the table
recovery is about 150% to 200%
compared to traditional method of
using a sluice box and amalgamating with mercury
Which is still the pre-dominate way in which material is processed in the Migori region of Kenya
The gold including the fine gold works it's way over here
and into the high grade port
where it can be collected and then smelted
and this is the middling port where any sulfides
or any medium density material will report to
this whole system uses a 1/2hp single phase motor
the pump is also a single phase
and it is powered by a small generator you can see down there
How are you?
My names are Joseph Chege, from Kenya, Migori county,
Behind is an equipment produced by MBMM which is known as shaking table,
Shaking table.
I have personally witnessed the effectiveness of the shaking table
which is helping the small scale miners here in Migori,
The shaking table was first introduced to us by Steve, Jason and Rolf
who also commissioned it.
Before we were using traditional slucing, but now we are using shaking
table which have increased our gold recovery by 200percent,
We thank the manufacturer MBMM for bringing the shaking table here in
Kenya Migori county. Earlier on we used to recover gold and to finish
the process we had to use mercury, but for shaking table we are not
using any chemicals. We appreciate those involved in bringing the
shaking table and we thank God for them. We would love to have more
shaking table in Kenya and other county like Kakamega and extend to Tanzania,
Thank you very much, we appreciate