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Activated carbon itself will have an effect on gold recovery

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jun sakura

The heart of any CIP or CIL plant is the activated carbon as it is the activated carbon itself that adsorbs the gold. Activated carbon itself will have an effect on gold recovery.  activated carbon for goldActivated carbon can be manufactured from a variety of raw materials, which define the structure (i.e. pore size distribution, hardness, etc) of activated carbon. The manufacturing process will also have an effect on the properties of activated carbon. Thus, there are a multitude of factors that will affect the properties of carbon. Since an activated carbon can be tailor made to suit certain applications, the factors most important for the specific application will determine the most suitable activated carbon. For gold recovery in CIP and CIL applications, these factors are: (i) Hardness – physical parameter. (ii) Kinetic activity – chemical parameter (iii) Equilibrium loading – chemical parameter (iv) Elutability – chemical parameter (v) Particle size characteristics – physical parameter (vi) Dense Activated carbon made from coconut shells is the most common type carbon used in CIP or CIL plants. 7.9.1. Chemical parameters The chemical parameters are chemical, they deal with the gold cyanide – activated carbon relationship. Two factors concern gold adsorption, one is the equilibrium loading and the other kinetic adsorption. High activity carbon is more expensive than low activity carbon, but the increase in kinetic gold activity can justify the price difference. Since plant conditions do influence gold recovery, some plants are over-designed to an extent where kinetic gold activity is not vital, thus cheaper low activity carbon can be used. However, all plants do have the ability to use high activity carbons, and since high activity carbons have high kinetic gold activity, less carbon will be required to recover the same amount of gold as with low activity carbons.

Kinetic adsorption is dependent on the activated carbon, while equilibrium loading is less so.coconutactivatedcarbon.com Equilibrium loading is more dependent on plant conditions than on activated carbon. If activated carbon can adsorb gold efficiently, then reversed conditions should allow for efficient elution. Thus an important factor of activated carbon is that it should not retain significant amounts of gold indefinitely, particularly under elution conditions.

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