ABSTRACT

Sieving is probably the earliest particle separation method that was devised; it is illustrated in Egyptian art, and was in common use in the 16th century, as described in De re metallica by Agricola (1556). Early applications were simply designed to classify powders into approximate size ranges; the use of sieving as a precision method of particle size analysis (so-called test sieving) was not popular until techniques for producing sieves of good precision were available in the mid 19th century.