Carbon can be turned to diamond artificially, but while watching a video I learned that a diamond can be made from the ashes of a man, how is this possible?
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3 Answers
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First off, take a look at the Wikipedia article: Synthetic diamond. Basically, there are two ways to artificially generate the heat and pressure needed. First is the "conventional" high-temperature, high-pressure method, which uses a press to put a sample of pure carbon graphite under pressure of about 5 gigapascals (1GPa = about 10,000 atmospheres or about 145,000 psi) and about $\pu{1500 ^\circ C}$. This combination encourages the flat hexagonal lattice structure of the graphite to morph into the trihexagonal 3-D lattice of diamond. Second is the chemical vapor deposition method, in which a substrate of diamond crystal is exposed to sublimated carbon plasma (temperatures exceeding $\pu{3000 ^\circ C}$) in a hard vacuum (less than .0001 torr). The sublimated carbon attaches to the crystal substrate, "growing" it.
Both of these can be used to create so-called "memorial diamonds" from the cremated remains of a human. To do that, first the ash is chemically filtered to separate the carbon from "pollutants" naturally occurring in the body that don't combust into gaseous substances during cremation, such as calcium, phosphorous, iron etc. Then, this "amorphous carbon", much like any other carbon, can be used in HTHP or CVD processes, along with additional carbon as may be required to grow the diamond to the proper size. Usually, the HTHP process is used, as it makes the best use of the available carbon (CVD requires sublimating a lot of carbon, more than would be left behind in the ash, and most of which ends up on the chamber walls and not the substrate), and requires less energy (it's easier to maintain mechanical pressure once applied than to maintain temperature).
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The diamonds are not actually made solely from the cremated ash of a human. The ashes are just added to the graphite that vis used to synthesis the diamond.
In the diamond synthesis process (look it up in wikipedia) you end up having very high temperatures and pressures. You usually use a mix of graphite and several metals: nickel, iron and or cobalt. Any cremated human residue will react with this, and be dissolved and/or react. When the diamonds are grown from this "soup" there is also a lot of unreacted graphite, as well as metal: with various impurities dissolved in it as it cools from liquid state.
Who is to really know where the cremated remains really end up? It is likely that some of the carbon in the ash, and other elements was taken up by synthesized diamonds, but not all of it will be.
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Yes, the diamond can also be created from human ashes. The diamonds which are made from ashes of man is described as the Cremation diamonds. These come under the categories of synthetic diamond or lab created diamonds because they are produced inside laboratories.
These are the methods through which synthetic diamonds are created in the laboratories:-
- HPHT (High-Pressure and High-Temperature)
- CVD (Chemical Vapor Deposition)
- Detonation of carbon-containing explosives.
- High-power ultrasound.
If you want to read about the whole process in details then you can read it from the below-mentioned article.
Source:- http://everdear.co/whole-process-create-brilliant-diamonds-ashes/
