ALROSA OJSC (Russia):

Karnatskiy V. A., Chief Metallurgist, Head of Department, KarnatskyVA@alrosa.ru

Institute «Yakutniproalmaz», ALROSA OJSC (Russia):

Savitskiy L. V., Head of Laboratory, Ph D, SavitskyLV@alrosa.ru

Imangulov S. V., Head of Department, Imangulovsv@alrosa.ru

Bondarenko I. F., Academic Secretary, Ph D, BondarenkoIF@alrosa.ru

Timoshenko N. V., Junior Reseacher

The main task of the measures, directed to improvement of the «ALROSA» marketable products' quality increase, consisits in decreasing diamonds damaging in diamond ore mining and processing. Damaging of diamonds in processing leads to considerable decrease in marketable products' cost due to changes in natural shape, decrease in mass, as well as damage in internal crystal integrity. A degree of constancy of these characteristics is commonly referred to as preservation. A whole complex of processing factors, affecting marketable products' preservation, is subject to continuous control from the company production personnel. Presently, with a view to work out optimal ore disintegration regimes that provide for required level of marketable products' preservation, as well as in application for comparative testing of new grinding equipment, colored diamondsindicators control method, restoration method and polarizationoptical method are employed. The article considers the essence, advantages and disadvantages of each of these methods, as well as certain results of the studies on diamonds crystals' preservation in processing, performed at diamond recovery facilities. As a result of deep investigation in destructive effects, considerable products quality increase was achieved through processing parameters optimization and replacement of unefficient equipment. The performed analysis of main factors, affecting products' preservation, permitted to determine ways to effectively increase diamonds products' cost as well as diamond recovery facilities' operation quality level. At the «ALROSA» recovery facilities it is recommended to decrease to a maximum degree liberated diamonds retention time in wet autogenous grinding mills, optimize mills drums' rotating speed regimes, apply preservation technologies for ground ore transportation, optimize design parameters of mills discharge grates and autogenous grinding water regimes.

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