Recently, a domestic material R&D team, in collaboration with a mining enterprise, has released a new achievement in gold extraction technology - an efficient adsorption process based on coconut shell activated carbon. This technology has successfully increased the gold recovery rate from low-grade gold ores and electronic waste to over 95%, while significantly reducing environmental pollution caused by the traditional cyanidation method, opening up a new path for the green recovery of gold resources.
According to the project leader, the technology uses high-quality coconut shells produced in Hainan as raw materials to prepare activated carbon with a high specific surface area through high-temperature activation. Its porous structure can accurately capture gold ions in the gold ore leachate, and its adsorption capacity is 30% higher than that of ordinary activated carbon. Compared with traditional processes, the new process does not require the use of highly toxic cyanides, reducing wastewater treatment costs by 60%. Moreover, the activated carbon can be recycled through high-temperature desorption, reducing energy consumption per ton of gold extracted by 25%.
Industry experts point out that low-grade gold ores account for more than 60% of China's total gold reserves, and the gold content in electronic waste is much higher than that in natural gold ores. The breakthrough of the coconut shell activated carbon extraction technology can not only improve the self-sufficiency rate of domestic gold resources but also promote the transformation of the precious metal extraction industry towards a low-carbon and environmentally friendly direction. In the next step, the R&D team will join hands with upstream and downstream enterprises to establish an industrialization base, and it is expected that large-scale promotion of this technology will be realized in 2026.