METHOD OF DETECTION OF DIAMONDS ON CONVEYER IN FLOW OR IN SPECIMEN OF DIAMOND-BEARING ROCK Russian patent published in 2002 - IPC

FIELD: technological processes at mining and concentrating plants, mining diamonds and conducting geological exploration work. SUBSTANCE: method is based on technology of layer-by-layer X-radiation computer tomography of diamond-bearing rock flow. For automatic detection and separation of diamonds from flow, use is made of double set of tomographic data pertaining to each layer being analyzed. Sets of data differ from each other in energy or spectrum of X-radiation energy used for their generation. Effective mass number and mass density are determined for each small volume of layer being analyzed. Subsequent effective detection and separation of diamonds is ensured due to unique feature of this pair of parameters for diamond crystals average mass density of diamond is equal to 3.52 g/cu.cm at effective atom number equal to 6. EFFECT: enhanced efficiency; increased yield of intact diamonds.