Oxidatively modified carbon as a promising material for gold extraction

In this work, we prepare a material termed oxidatively modified carbon (OMC), which significantly outperforms commercial activated carbon products available on the gold mining market. The intriguingly high sorption efficiency of OMC is explained by the graphene oxide (GO) like fine chemical structure of the particles' surface. At the same time, OMC can be easily prepared from readily available carbon sources by wet chemistry protocols with the cost of production 10 lower than that for GO. The particulate structure of OMC allows simple separation from the used-up solutions. Addition of ammonia to the gold-cyanide solution, additionally boosts sorption capacity of OMC. The developed material can be used in gold mining industry as a sorbent, which can potentially increase the efficiency of the gold extraction process.