Synthetic diamonds from loved ones

[MrYoung]

Was Queen Victoria wrong to save lockets of hair of her poor deceased husband? This did, infact, start a whole style of jewelry in the mid 1800''s. Mourning jewelry was comprised of "...glass or rock crystal-covered compartments to hold the hair of a loved one, living or deseased" -Warman''s Jewelry, 2002.

So, this is not a new thing, despite the obvious advancement in technology. Is it merely the fact that a part of a person who is deceased still can be touched, felt and held?

Following the tradition of classical mourning jewelry, would you wear a synthetic diamond created from the "byproducts" of a loved one if he/she was still living?

i.e. 2.01 carat, fancy intense yellow "fingernail" diamond?

 

[risingsun]

I find this whole idea quite awful. And I do believe it is way a to profit from the grief of others.

 

[rainbowtrout]

If people want to do it, and it helps them---why not. I think the idea that it would get in the way of grief is somewhat odd; people keep ashes around, they visit graves, keep locks of hair, old photos, clothes, etc. We kept my grandfather''s ashes around for a year until we were ready to scatter them...


If you have children with someone they are more of a physical reminder than a diamond would be.

 

[sera]

ew.

"Here''s that 3-stone heirloom ring, Sally... along with Grandma, Grandpa and Uncle Joe."

um. no.

 

[Garry H (Cut Nut)]

Date: 12/14/2007 9:20:26 AM
Author: perry

There are some patents on these things, and they cover the means of extracting and purifying the carbon. The prices these companies charge are in excess of what a natural diamond of the same characteristics would be, which leads me to believe that the processes they use are in fact quite involved and expensive.

I know some scientists who have doubts about this as well, though. I would be surprised if the process does not involve adding additional carbon; at least one of the patents mentions doing just that.


So let me explain the process and you will see where my doubts creep in:

First off - synthitic diamond production is fairly common. A large quantitity of diamond abrasive powder is manufactured this way. These diamonds are extreemly small.

Diamond grinding powder is commonly available in the less than 1 micron size range for about $0.50 (50 cents) per carat in 100 carat quantaties (20 ounces):+ shipping.

As the size gets larger - say to about 1/1000 of an inch the price goes up to about $1.25 per carat: + shipping.

The price gets much higher as you approach ''point'' size stones.

Synthetic diamond gemstones are also commonly produced; and the only companies that I know that are routinely producing them are working in the fancy yellow range - where the cost of production is low enough that the product is commercially viable.

These companies can produce synthetic diamonds in the F-I color range; but the production time (and cost) are about twice what the fancy yellow cost are; and the resulting diamonds would be much more expensive than natural stones: Of course, limited quantities of F-I colored synthetic diamonds have been produced just to show it can be done.

There is another process out there with I think great promise - but the last I checked they were producing brown diamonds that had not found a market except as abrasives and heat sinks - which are not commercially viable for the process (but the process remains in the R&D stage).

Normal commercial grade carbon powder is available for pennies per Lb. High purity carbon powder that is used for synthetic diamond production is, I understand, in well over a $100 per Lb; and you need an ounce or two to put into a High pressure High Temperature machine in order to get out a cut gemstone in the carat or two range (and sometimes none at all).

If you were to extract several ounces of high purity carbon powder from human remains it would be quite the process. The carbon is held in the flesh; and common chemical purification processes do not recover all the carbon in a material (and can be quite wastefull). Thus, I would suggest that a good quantitiy of material would need to be started with - about 22 Lb of flesh, assuming 5 purification stages where 50% of the carbon is recovered at each stage - in order to get a sufficient quantity of high purity carbon.

Here is how that works out: If you desire 2 ounces of high quality pure carbon; and each purification stage rejects 50% of the carbon you would need 4 lb of carbon at the start of the process. 4 Lb divided by 18.5% (the fraction of carbon per body weight) gives 21.6 Lb (and the number is off a bit because the bones contain almost no carbon - but it is close enough to give you an idea).

Given that most people die closer to 100 lb that would probably be in the range of the flesh from two legs, or a substaintial portion of the torso.

You would disolve the flesh in chemicals and have a resulting chemical soup. First extraction step would be chemical separation of most of the carbon, then I propose that you would probably need at least 5 stages of purification by various forms (each loosing perhaps 50% of the carbon) before you would potentially have sufficiently pure carbon based chemical that could be reduced to two ounces of powder. Then you would need to reduce the chemical to a carbon powder.

Estimated cost of this process would be in the thousands of dollars range (and potentialy in the tens of thousands of dollar range if this was done for just a few people) - to get your two ounces of highly pure carbon powder to make your gemstone quality diamond from.

I suggest that even at the fancy yellow diamond range - that this would be so cost prohibitive that no one can do it.

On the other hand. I could take perhaps some hair, a finger nail clipping, maybee the flesh from a finger or toe - disolve it, do a basic first stage carbon extraction. Do a rough conversion to some form of very unpure carbon powder (I would only get a smudge worth of carbon); for perhaps a couple hundred dollars.

Now I put a few microscopic grains of that carbon into a couple ounces of diamond grade production powder and make a synthetic diamond. Any diamond formed will almost certianly not include the miniscule amount of unpure carbon from the human remains.

Sorry folks, unless you are truely wealthy and think nothing of disolving a good chunk of an entire body - its a scam.

While there may be less wastefull purification processes that would require less flesh, starting with an assumption of 50% product loss per stage is a fairly common practice for conceptual feasability planning.

Anyone claiming to do it from the remaining ashes is also promoting a scam. Their is virtually no carbon in the ashes as the carbon easily burns (which is why we use carbon based fuels).


Perry

Thank you Perry

I agree, but from a different direction:

I have never heard who is doing it - or where the process is being done. The veil of secrecy is ridiculous - there shoul be factory tours etc.

I bought a "synthetic" yellow diamond at Tucscon trade fair in 1994. Every test I subjected the stone to showed it was natural. I got ripped off. At that time synthetic yellows were costing more than natural yellow.

Since there is no way to prove that any of John Doe is contained in Mary''s diamond, I smell a rat!!!!

 

[rainbowtrout]

perry your posts like this are always so useful and informative. thanks!

 

[perry]

Garry; I agree. Who is doing this is a good question. I beileve there are only 3 or 4 companies in the world producing gemstone quality and size synthetic diamonds. Why would they want to mess with this?

Rainbow, glad to here your still around.

Here is some other information on relative synthetic diamond production:

GE makes about 80 tons (about 360 million carat weight) of synthetic diamond abrasives & other industrial products a year, and there are a number of other companies also making abrasives and other industrial products (including DeBeers) - with a total annual industrial synthetic diamond production of about 3 billion carats.

About 100 million carats of mined diamonds per year become abrasives and other industrial diamonds.

About 20 million carats of mined diamonds per year are suitable for gemstones.

Synthetic diamond gemstone manufacturer is in the range of 10,000 carats per year.

Perry