Recovery of gold from dilute solutions by using some biomass wastes

黄金是最昂贵的贵金属之一，不仅被广泛用作传统的珠宝，而且还被广泛用作各种著名的高级材料的有用成分。一方面，贵金属的可得性非常有限；另一方面，这些贵重金属的很大一部分在金属精炼或废弃电子设备过程中以含水副产品的形式被丢弃。应紧急开发有效和经济的贵金属回收工艺，以便重新使用和再循环。最近，利用低成本和广泛可用的生物质材料的吸附过程被认为是最有前途的技术之一，可用于从稀溶液中回收金。本研究计划将包括几个短期和长期的研究项目，以改进和基本了解稀溶液中生物吸附-还原回收金的关键机制。

Gold is one of the most expensive precious metals that are widely used not only as traditional jewelleries but also as useful components in a variety of well known advanced materials. On one hand the availability of precious metals is very limited; on the other hand, substantial proportions of these valuable metals are being discarded in the form of aqueous by-products during metal refining or with obsolete electronic devices. Effective and economical recovery processes for precious metals should be urgently developed for their reuse and recycling. Recently, a sorption process using low cost and widely available biomass materials is considered one of the most promising technologies that can be used for the recovery of gold from dilute solutions. This research program will consist of several short and long-term research projects for the improvement and fundamental understanding of the key mechanism for gold recovery from dilute solutions by biosorption followed by reduction.