Alrosa Testing Diamond Separator It Intends to Sell to Industry

Alrosa will test a pioneering technology that will increase productivity and speed up the extraction of diamonds, a product it intends to sell to the global industry should it prove successful. 

The field testing will begin in September, the miner announced on its website last week. The new device is likely to quadruple the production of kimberlite ore to 300 tonnes per hour.  

The new technology — a diamond separator — will sort diamonds from waste rock by combining two tools: X-ray fluorescence and radiography. This process will ensure a more accurate and rapid extraction of diamonds, Alrosa said. Additionally, unlike earlier stationary models, the universal separator has a container design, enabling easy transportation between sites and direct use at deposits, including outdoor environments. 

“The work on creating the universal separator was carried out in close cooperation between the teams of the Innovation and Technology Center, the Bourevestnik Innovation Center and the Udachny Mining and Processing Plant of Alrosa,” said Andrei Nasekailov, head of Alrosa’s Innovation and Technology Center. “Many technological solutions were created from scratch — there are no analogues to this equipment in the world.”  

Following a series of successful pilot tests, Alrosa engineers received a working prototype of the separator, which showed stable performance across all systems at the Bourevestnik Innovation Center testing site. The miner has now deployed the separator at a processing plant and will undergo testing next month. If the product yields successful results, the company intends to begin serial production, it noted. 

Image: Rough-diamond sorting. (Alrosa)