Dear Atta,

Metals are nano particle mainly absorb by fine particles especially clay minerals. In sediment, these metals are captured by clays minerals (2 μm), this is why it was sieved in 63um .

And if you sieve at 2mm you will have less accurate results!!!

(1) Not very clear what's your objective. Metals indeed tend to associate with fine particles, but it doesn't mean that they are not associated with larger particles (> 63 µm). Sediments in the field are in nature heterogeneous, composing of different size fractions. Using only the finer fractions for the research may therefore result in biased results and assessments.

(2) Sieving sediments into 63 µm meshes is not a very easy task, particularly if you still want to preserve the chemical properties.

Dear Mr. Rasool,

I can only share the experience of Dr. Xie when reading your question. Be more precise are you interested in getting practical information about sediment classification and separation or is it a more genetic issue you do not come to grips with ?

Sincerely yours

H.G.Dill

Hi, Mr.Rasool,

It's true that I am not very clear about what's your objective, but I list some opinons I guess it 's useful to your research:

1) different fractions particles perform some specific characteristics in particular surface performence, including wetting performence, physicochemical properties and so on. Thus, it is necessary to continue your research with different fraction particles in order to make your results more accurate and convictive. Of couse, it is possible only using a specific fraction particle(-10um or -37um or-74um) in the future research, for the sake of exploring the relationship between reagents and particle size (it is just a example).

2)If you want to sieve through a mesh with pore diameter 63 μm , generall speaking, it's quite a tough work in our research especially if you want to preserve the particle's chemical properties. Which means you must using the dry sieve operation, the meshes will extremely easy be plug up by fine particles(especially when the particle size below -74um) .

Hope these information serve your purpose.

Zhixaing