Algal mats in sea-swamps in Borneo (Maylasia?) are known to store gold. Some run up to one tenth of an ounce per ton, which they are believed to extract from sea water. No one has ever found a process that will economically extract the gold from this particular plant matter. I don't know if they have tackled a co-generation concept, or if the plant matter loses gold in drying.
Birch trees on the Brown-McDade claims west of Timmins, Ontario (a province in Canada) were found to run 1/10 of an ounce per ton in gold during routine bio-geochemical sampling.
Naturally circulating "humic" acids are thought to be the means of concentration of gold values that report to sulphidic hydrocarbon indurated limestones near the Alberta tar sands. The controversial gold deposits which some think were apocryphal in the Alberta case, are actually reported worldwide in other tar sands deposits.
The affinity of metals for hydrocarbons in an liquid mixture or as precipitative solids, is the principle in the usage of methyl isobutyl ketone in atomic-absorption acid-solvent gold assaying, carbon-in-pulp recovery in adsorption of gold from cyanide solutions, and resin-bead water purification.
Carbon is also used to precipitate or deoxidize metal in furnace melts to create separation of the desirable metal in the pour.
Gold will report to charcoal, resins, gasoline, coal, limestone and other carbon sources from cyanide, carbonic, nitrate, bromide, or chloride solution. The new carbon aero-gels may be able to electrically adsorb gold on their vast surface areas from very weak solutions.
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