Selective gold recovery by carbon nitride through photoreduction

Herein, photoreduction strategy was used for the first time to selectively recover gold based on the photoreduction process by carbon nitride. The obtained results showed that the selectivity of gold is >99% in the presence of gold (AuCl4−), copper (Cu2+), cadmium (Cd2+) and chromium (Cr3+) ions under light irradiation and anaerobic conditions.