STONE ME!
Tycoon says he can make diamonds out of thin air... and they’re ‘eco-friendly’
MAKING diamonds out of thin air all sounds rather pie in the sky. But that was the gem of an idea dreamed up by green energy tycoon Dale Vince.
He has likened the concept behind his so- called ‘ sky diamonds’ to alchemy, the medieval pseudoscience of turning base metals into gold.
His top secret process works, apparently, with his stones recognised by the International Gemological Institute, which certifies gems and jewellery.
Mr Vince, 59, says his approach is eco-friendly and calls it ‘bling without the sting’.
He says his method begins with sucking carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. It is liquefied and purified, then mixed with hydrogen, obtained from rainwater by a chemical process called hydrolysis.
The carbon dioxide and hydrogen are then made into methane gas.
This is pumped on to ‘diamond seeds’ – 5-7mm square thin pieces of diamond – at his laboratory in Stroud, Gloucestershire. The carbon in the gas attaches to the seeds and forms the crystal structure of a diamond.
The ‘sky diamonds’ take two weeks to grow in balls of plasma kept at about 8,000C.
And Mr Vince is proud to say: ‘There’s no waste products and no pollution.’