A method of recovering gold and silver from pregnant cyanide solutions by adsorbing the precious metals to granules of activated carbon, which are typically ground up coconut shells.

A precious metals leaching technique in which granular activated carbon particles much larger than the ground ore particles are added to the cyanidation pulp after the precious metals have been solubilized. The activated carbon and pulp are agitated together to enable the solubilized precious metals to become adsorbed onto the activated carbon. The loaded activated carbon is mechanically screened to separate it from the barren ore pulp and processed to remove the precious metals and prepare it for reuse. Similar to carbon-in-leach process.

Gold is leached conventionally from a slurry of gold ore with cyanide in agitated tanks. The leached slurry then passes into the CIP circuit where carbon granules are mixed with the slurry and gold is adsorbed on to the carbon. The granules are separated from the slurry and treated in an elution circuit to remove the gold.