Methods of single mineral separation for sediments of the Changjiang estuary, the Yellow Sea and the East China Sea

Single Clastic minerals are commonly used for detecting provenance and water dynamics. Fine sands are the best for the study as such and thus required to be separated from the others although very fine sands are also convenient for the purpose. Mineral separation in heavy liquid is a common practice for single mineral separation, of which the key is to select the heavy liquid properly. Different target minerals can be separated and selected by blending specific gravity liquids together, and the separation efficiency can be improved by centrifugal separation. Magnetic separation is a simple and convenient method popularly used for sorting out different magnetic minerals. Nd₂Fe₁₄B permanent magnet may partly replace the function of an electromagnetic sorter, specifically for the samples in small volume, consisting of multiple minerals with changing magnetism. Chemical separation uses various solvents in different concentration to treat the samples under specific conditions, in order to dissolve obstructive minerals and keep target minerals. Manual separation is required if it is difficult to remove impurities by other methods. The separation of amphibole and quartz represents the basic procedure for single mineral separation, and the different methods are adopted in order to make mineral separation more efficient, fast and accurate. Of course, there are still some problems remained in mineral sorting and further studies are needed.