Question: How do you change coal to diamond

Sammy Wambua answered on 10 Jul 2017:

Although diamonds and coal are both different forms of carbon, turning coal to diamond is complex if not impossible!

Generally carbon requires enormous amounts of heat (thousands of degrees) and pressure (130,000 atmospheres) to become diamond. These conditions can typically only be found about 90 to 100 miles below the surface of the Earth, deep within the mantle.

Diamond is pure carbon formed into a crystalline structure – colored diamonds do contain minor impurities (boron, for example, makes diamonds blue, while nitrogen turns them yellow). Coal on the other hand is hardly pure as it includes many other substances, including hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, sulfur, arsenic, selenium and mercury among other impurities which, alone, prevent coal from being turned into diamonds.