sluicing

sluice

S0485700 (slo͞os)n.1. a. An artificial channel for conducting water, with a valve or gate to regulate the flow: sluices connecting a reservoir with irrigated fields.b. A valve or gate used in such a channel; a floodgate: open sluices to flood a dry dock. Also called sluice gate.2. A body of water impounded behind a floodgate.3. A sluiceway.4. A long inclined trough, as for carrying logs or separating gold ore.v. sluiced, sluic·ing, sluic·es v.tr.1. To flood or drench with or as if with a flow of released water.2. To wash with water flowing in a sluice: sluicing sediment for gold.3. To draw off or let out by a sluice: sluice floodwater.4. To send (logs, for example) down a sluice.v.intr. To flow out from or as if from a sluice.

[Middle English scluse, from Old French escluse, from Late Latin exclūsa, from Latin, feminine past participle of exclūdere, to shut out; see exclude.]

Thesaurus

Adj.

sluicing - pouring from or as if from a sluice; "the sluicing rain"

Sluicing

sluicing

[′slüs·iŋ] (mining engineering) Washing auriferous earth through sluices provided with riffles and other gold-saving appliances. Separation of minerals in a flowing stream of water. Moving earth, sand, gravel, or other rock or mineral materials by flowing water.

Sluicing

a process of primitive mining of alluvial deposits in which they are washed by a free-flowing stream of water released along a trench that cuts through a deposit. Washing through and gradually deepening the trench, the water carries away the lighter, valueless rock. The heavier minerals, which are to be mined, settle to the bottom of the trench and are then extracted by means of a washing drum and pans. Sluicing was the most highly productive means of mining gold-bearing placers at the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century. The perfecting of the method of sluicing of ore in the 1830’s in the Urals laid the basis for the hydraulic process of mining deposits. In the USSR, sluicing has everywhere been replaced by mechanized mining processes, including the use of an excavator, a bulldozer, or a scraper and hydraulic and dredging equipment.

REFERENCE

Shorokhov, S. M. Razrabotka rossypnykh mestorozhdenii i osnovy proektirovaniia. Moscow, 1963.

V. A. BOIARSKII