Sustainable gold mining wastewater treatment by sorption using low-cost materials

Sorption technique was employed to remove heavy metals from gold mining effluent using natural and plant materials for sustainability. An assessment of the effluent quality of a gold mining company in Ghana indicated that arsenic, copper and cyanide were the major pollutants in the process effluent. Arsenic and copper were successfully removed from the effluent by the studied materials. The research showed that the down-flow fixed-bed treatment configuration is an ideal system for the simultaneous removal of copper and arsenic from low concentration gold mining effluent, in addition to other heavy metals present in very low concentrations.