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(More customer reviews)"Diamond Mines" provides an overview of current diamond mining (underground and open pit), ore processing, and their grading and shaping.
Open pit mining is illustrated at a Botswana facility. Trucks with 170-ton capacity haul ore to a crusher - 250 tons of ore are processed per recovered diamond. X-rays are used to help finally pick out the diamonds, causing them to fluorescence. After leaving the crusher, all further processing occurs within containers to reduce the theft problem. Surveillance cameras and exit searches are also employed to contain theft.
Brazil and India were early important diamond producers, with the diamonds often found on the surface.
The "DeBeers" name comes from a South African farm located in an important diamond-producing area. The brothers sold out early and had no further role in the industry. Cecil Rhodes became the leader - consolidating mine holdings and ultimately controlling some 95% of diamond sources by the turn of the century. It was he that used the DeBeers name that is now so well known.
Russia put cracks in the DeBeers cartel when mining began in Siberia in 1954. Its intense coldness presented special mining and building (prevent thawing the permafrost to stabilize foundations) problems. Canada now has become another source as of 1991. Its diamonds are located under lakes - recovery requires first relocating the fish and then draining. Another recent source is the Atlantic Ocean off the African coast.
Diamonds are sorted into up to 16,000 categories, beginning with gem, near-gem, and industrial. Machines and computers accomplish about 60% of sorting and cutting. (Lasers are used for the latter.) Human diamond cutters apprentice for five years.
Man-made industrial diamonds were first produced in 1954. Today gem-quality man-made diamonds sell for about 1/10th the price of mined diamonds.
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