Recovering gold from gold-containing wastewater
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Our factory is engaged in the jewelry processing industry; the gold content in the wastewater after treatment is around 1 ppm. As for other water quality parameters, they are as follows: TDS at 1500 mg/L, COD at 80 mg/L, BOD at 15 mg/L, ammonia nitrogen at 400 mg/L, and conductivity at 3000 us/cm. What methods are used to recover gold? I hope fellow netizens will be active and participate in the discussion.
Consider extraction; there’s no other good solution, right?
There is still 1 gram of gold in 1 ton of water, so it has some value for recovery. I suggest installing a small concentration device – whether it’s for extraction, ion exchange, or membrane concentration. After concentration, an electrowinning device can be used as well. The total cost is around 100,000 yuan. However, the product obtained through this process has high value; it can be reused within a year, and no fines need to be paid either
Can you do it? Membrane concentration has been tried before, but due to the high salt content in the water, the concentration ratio was not high and the results were poor. Do you have any good suggestions?
Where are you from? What is the water volume? I’m in Xiamen, Fujian. Let’s see what to do
Isn’t this content level way too low? Ore is generally only valuable when it contains 3 to 5 ppm. The cost of recovering all the gold from 1 ton of water might be higher than the value of that gold itself.
A concentration of 1 ppm should be sufficient; if it is not present in the water, activated carbon adsorption can be considered. I wonder if the levels of other heavy metals are high?
I run a jewelry processing factory. What kind of technology do you use? Our water volume is close to 1 ton per day.
Contains a small amount of zinc ions. What is the efficiency of activated carbon adsorption? Can it be regenerated?
This post was last edited by wei*ao355 on 2015-6-18 at 18:20. Activated carbon is not called regenerated; it is called desorbed. It can be reused after desorption. There are no organic substances in the water, right?
The water volume is a bit too low every day, and the concentration is also very low – only 1 gram per ton. I think it would be costly to try to recover such a small amount.