Activated carbon is used to recover gold from aqueous cyanide solutions in the mining industry.
http://www.cyanidecode.org/cyanide_use.php
"Highly activated carbon is used in the dissolved gold recovery process, either by introducing it directly into the CIL (carbon-in-leach) tanks or into separate CIP (carbon-in-pulp) tanks after leaching. The activated carbon adsorbs the dissolved gold from the leach slurry thereby concentrating it onto a smaller mass of solids. The carbon is then separated from the slurry by screening and subjected to further treatment to recover the adsorbed gold."
"Activated carbon in contact with a pulp containing gold can typically recover more than 99.5% of the gold in the solution in 8 to 24 hours, depending on the reactivity of the carbon, the amount of carbon used and the mixer's efficiency. The loaded carbon is then separated from the pulp by screens that are air or hydrodynamically swept, thus preventing blinding by the near sized carbon particles. The pulp residue is then either thickened to separate the cyanide containing solution for recovery/destruction of the cyanide, or sent directly to the tailings storage facility from which the cyanide containing solution is recycled to the leach plant."