The idea of separating minerals and wood based material by floating off is often used in the wood industry for separating stones and metals from bark or logs. The object there is to clean the wood/bark prior to chipping or shredding, with the stones etc removed by a drag chain.

The process can however be married to a submerged ash conveyor that you would use under a boiler.

What is needed is a submerged belt conveyor rising out of a tank and a reverse water flow taking the timber the opposite way with either a belt, drag chain or jack ladder to help it out of the water (depending on the size of the timber).

Final design and selection would be based on throughput of both Bauxite and timber plus sizing. ■

I think you would be pushing a lot of water around that circuit to do that, Andrew.

There used to be scalping screens with large square apertures for wood removal. But that was for roots and so forth.

Or are you talking about finer wood?

Wood was sometimes considered as a potential source of oxalate in the subsequent alumina process, but evidence always suggested its contribution was dwarfed by the much finer organics in the bauxite.

Can you give a little more detail about what you are trying to do, exactly, and why? ■