By Charles Kubach, Mine-Engineer.Com Sampling slurries (mixtures of solids and liquid) in a plant or mill appears, at first glance, to be easier than sampling solids. Since slurries are pumped, always moving and are contained within pipes, it is a near ideal situation for sampling. However, since pipes are round, it is difficult to get a complete cross section of the flow through the pipe. The particles at the pipe walls are the most difficult to extract with in pipe samplers. This brings us back to sampling at a dumping point, which is usually a large tank. By using a cross stream sampler, with a slurry cutter, at a pipe discharge point, it is possible to obtain a very accurate primary sample. A ideal secondary sampler for slurries is the vezin sampler. It will give splits with reliabilities ranging up to 99%. If the particles are fine, one can use a 2% cutter and reduce the primary sample by 98% in a vezin. For large volumes of primary samples, it may be necessary to use two or three vezins, to successively split the sample to obtain a final lab size volume for the QC lab. For information of the equipment used in slurry sampling, click in the following buttons on the side menu: Vezin Cross Stream Custom
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