"The extraction of natural diamonds is carried out in several stages, but before that it is worth noting that there are two types of mining:
- From kimberlite pipes (in open-pit mines and underground mines)
- From placers (by washing river rock).
Diamond mining is a complex, high-tech process.
At a depth of 100-200 km in the bowels of the earth, under high pressure and at temperatures up to 1.5 thousand ° C, carbon is converted into diamond.
After some time, minerals are displaced from the earth's crust to the surface, forming explosion centers, the so–called "kimberlite pipes", named after the city of Kimberley - one of the first diamond mines in South Africa.
Kimberlite is an igneous rock containing diamonds and is one of the main sources of their extraction.
To illustrate what a kimberlite pipe looks like, let's give an example of an inverted glass of wine, the leg of which resembles a crack in the earth's crust.
Mining methods
1. Open method
For an open mining method, the topsoil is removed, after which the quarry is deepened, purposefully blowing up the walls. Then, the resulting rock is taken to the plant for processing.
2. Closed method
In this method, mining is carried out directly in the bowels of the earth, for which special drilling of mines takes place, and then, from underground tunnels, the ore is lifted to the surface of the earth and sent for processing.
This method is much more complex and costly, so it is resorted to only in cases where an open method is impossible.
3. Offshore mining
Modern offshore diamond mining technology is a high-tech deep-sea vessels specially equipped for the development of offshore deposits, equipped with large-scale drilling drills that are capable of plowing the ocean floor and gravel.
The precious rock raised to the surface by special crawler excavators is transported to processing plants using giant pipes.
