Carbon-in-Pulp (CIP)

Recovering dissolved gold onto activated carbon suspended in the leached slurry.

Definition

A process for recovering gold from cyanide leach solutions using activated carbon to adsorb gold. The carbon is then treated to recover the gold. CIP is one of the most common gold recovery methods used in modern mills.

In practice

CIP and the closely related CIL are the standard back end of a conventional gold plant. Seeing them in a flowsheet tells you the ore is free-milling and the processing route is well understood — which is good news for financing.

See also

  • Cyanide Leaching — A process that uses cyanide solution to dissolve gold from ore. The gold is then recovered from solution throu…
  • Mill — A facility where ore is crushed, ground, and processed to extract valuable minerals. Gold mills typically use …
  • Metallurgical Recovery — The percentage of valuable metal that can be extracted from ore during processing. For example, 90% gold recov…

More operations terms

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