Suggestions needed on how to separate activated carbon from wood chips containing gold in gold mining?

Question

I need a process whereby I will be able to separate activated carbon from wood chips, both containing gold. It must be a process whereby I can extract the gold from each product separately without destroying either product by burning it. The wood chips will be leached-out gold and the activated carbon will be illuted extraction. The process must be able to handle large tonnages of the mixed product. Your input into this matter would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

From your question it sounds like the gold is finely divided. I which case I will avoid the obvious - mechanical separation with rifflers and sluices.

The main way folks extract low levels of finely divided gold out of soil is through cyanide leaching. They build big mounds (hundreds of feet high) of soil on a watertight membrane. They drip the cyanide liquid on top and let it drain through the soil. They pull the solution at the bottom collecting pound. Run it through a deionizing resin bed. Then when the bed gets loaded up with gold ions, they smelt the whole bed in a reducing environment. Everything is burned away except the metals.

Then they have to refine that mixed metal, to gain the pure gold.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_extraction

Now your problem with keeping the wood and coal… At the end of this extraction process you have cyanide-contaminated soil. The way you treat this soil is with roasting, to burn up the cyanide and leaving mostly clean soil.

You said you want to keep the wood and coal, obviously destructive incineration is not the option you want. But this means you are going to have some toxic sawdust on your hands.