Cyanide has been traditionally employed in gold industries such as leaching of gold ores and gold-containing wastes as well as gold plating. For the purpose of recovering the trace concentrations of gold from effluents from such industries, fundamental studies including adsorption isotherm studies for evaluating thermodynamic parameters of this system and incineration behavior of the adsorbent were conducted using a novel adsorbent prepared by the reaction of commercial cellulose with concentrated sulphuric acid. The uptake of AulI) was drastically improved after the addition of NaCIO under acidic condition. Complete recovery of Au(l) was successfully achieved using this adsorbent from model solutions, indicating its potential in the application of trace concentration of Au(lI) from actual waste cyanide solutions.