How Does Natural Diamonds Extraction Occur?

Hitesh Singh
3 min readMay 15, 2019

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Right from its early stage of finding, diamonds have always been a priced possession across our history. In modern times too, diamonds are valued equally high not just for their peculiar appearance but for all other characteristic features it holds. While diamonds have always been the hot favorite for the manufacturing of wholesale diamond Jewelry across the world, its industrial applications are also quite pronounced. However, industrial diamonds are usually of lower grade than compared to the jewelry specific kind, they still carry same properties of hardness and durability which makes them ideal for industrial use.

Diamond extraction

Diamonds are easily the most expensive among the gemstone race also because they are quite rare in the nature and require great effort and labor to hammer out. Read along to know more about diamond extraction and its industrial uses:

Diamond Pipe Mining

It is the most common type of diamond extraction process and has been persistent from a long time since professional gemstone mining kicked off. Most of the wholesale designer jewelry in India are formed from the gemstones extracted through pipe mining and thus holds great importance in the field of diamond extraction as well.

Geologists first locate the probable diamond sources on the ground level and then carry further steps for most profitable extraction. Sample ores are extracted and analyzed to determine the profitability of mining at that location. Once the experts certify the rich availability of gemstones across the target region, heavy machinery is deployed to extract and clean the ores for final production.

Because the availability of good quality diamond is so rare in nature, workers can sometimes dig out about a few hundred tons of ore before they can actually derive a production grade single carat of gemstone diamond.

Rough diamonds are then transported to secure facilities and processing plants to transform the naturally occurring diamond ore into gemstone usable quality and industrial-specific grade.

Surface Mining

Also known as alluvial mining, surface diamond mining is a popular extraction method that is usually carried near the areas of secondary diamond deposits such as riverbanks or near sea locations.

Alluvial mining is a primitive method of gemstone extraction where artificial obstructions are created to divert the water bodies from their course and then extract the diamond ores from the moist river floors. Once an appreciable quantity of diamond-rich ore is extracted from the river bed, all the amass is transported to special facilities for further processing and value addition. It is sometimes also referred as artisanal mining in the production market.

Offshore deposits

Some experts also team up with diamond extractors to mine marine deposits near the coast and sea regions. Marine-based mining is also presumed to be more productive than land-based mining across many coastal regions across the world.

A lot of diamond mining firms and private companies are willingly shifting their focus into marine-based mining for its huge potential and profitable outcomes. Some of the methods used for marine extraction of diamonds include shallow mining in water bodies combined with simple alluvial mining and deep sea extraction.

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