Carbon Strip Circuit

After loading the activated carbon with gold in the CIL circuit, gold recovery proceeds in the following steps:

1. Elution or stripping of the carbon.
2. Carbon regeneration.
3. Gold production by electrowinning or cementation from the eluate solution.

Steps 1 and 2 are performed in the Carbon Strip Vessel and Carbon Regeneration Kiln, respectively. Electrowinning (EW) of gold from dilute pregnant solutions is used extensively to produce metallic gold from cyanide solutions. A modern EW cell is rectangular with pervious cathodes packed with steel wool and stainless steel mesh anodes. The electrodes are sized to fit snugly down the sides and along the bottom of the cell, so that the electrolyte has to flow through the electrodes.

The gold produced from the EW cells is sent to the refinery circuit.