Memorial Diamonds for a Diamond Burial

Credit: www.algordanza.com

A company in Switzerland has given new meaning to the sentiment that we carry the dead with us. Algordanza makes carrying your dead with you literally a possibility with their “memorial diamonds.” The Swiss company will compress your loved one’s ashes and turn them into man-made diamonds.

The first reproducible diamond synthesis (a diamond produced by an artificial process) was reported around 1953, and since then the manufacturing of synthetic diamonds from industrial carbon sources has grown, with synthetic diamonds currently comprising around two percent of the gem-quality diamond market. Algordanza uses HPHT-Technology (High Pressure/High Temperature Technology), a technology developed in Soviet research centers, to recreate the high temperature and pressures occurring in the Earth’s mantle, about 90 miles below the surface of the Earth, where temperatures rise above 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The environment required for diamond formation and stability is found only in specific locations in the mantle, mostly beneath the stable interiors of continental plates.  Algordonza’s refined technology reproduces this critical temperature-pressure environment in their HPHT machines in order to provide you the opportunity to memorialize your loved one with what Algordanza calls a “diamond burial.”

Credit: www.algordanza.com

The process of producing a “remembrance” diamond begins with extracting carbon from
the cremation ashes. By mass, the human body is made up of 18 percent carbon, which has been called “the element of life” because it forms the basis of all organic substances. During cremation, the majority of carbon is released as carbon dioxide, with about 1 to 5 percent of carbon remaining in the ashes. In the Algordanza laboratories, this carbon is isolated from the ashes and converted into purified graphite.  The graphite is heated inside the HPHT machines at temperatures as high as 2,700 degrees and pressure as high as 870,00 pounds per square inch, simulating the critical temperature-pressure environment inside those special diamond-forming areas in the Earth’s mantle.

Ronaldo Willy, the founder of Algordanza, says of the diamonds: “Every diamond from each person is slightly different. It’s always unique.” One of the more obvious ways this uniqueness appears is in the color of the diamonds; finished diamonds can range from white to dark blue, depending on the boron content of the cremation ashes and the bones of the person who died. Algordonza offers a variety of cuts, or will provide the rough, uncut diamond. Memorial diamonds start at €3,927.