A paper co-authored by the scientist at USGS who led the cooperative effort, which appears in a comprehensive report issued by the Virginia Division of Mineral Resources concerning investigations on the inner continental shelf of Virginia, describes how the Barrier Separator was used:

Geochronology
   At the laboratories of the Geological Survey of Canada Barrier separators are exploiting low paramagnetic and diamagnetic susceptibilities of pyrites, zircon, and other minerals which, for the most part, report as nonmagnetic when processed with the Isodynamic Separator. A Barrier Separator served in a project led by a scientist at Washington University, St. Louis, which resulted in identification of a rock one hundred million years older than any previously identified.  

   Conventional separators can exploit only ferromagnetic and paramagnetic susceptibilities. The mechanisms of separation common to such devices are based on attracting particles toward magnetized surfaces. In such separators, because magnetic force urges diamagnetic materials away from a region of higher field intensity, they are collected with the “nonmagnetic” residues, which usually include weakly paramagnetic particles.

   In the diamagnetic mode the LB-1 employs magnetic force to deflect diamagnetic particles at the Barrier, while paramagnetic and “nonmagnetic” particles follow paths determined by gravity.

   A United States producer of high purity ground quartz uses the LB-1 in the diamagnetic mode for quality control. Samples of quartz which have already been processed in a high intensity, high gradient magnetic separator to remove contaminating minerals by exploiting their paramagnetic susceptibility are separated in the LB-1 by exploiting the diamagnetic susceptibility of the quartz to separate both the paramagnetic and the “nonmagnetic” contaminating minerals.

   The producer of quartz reports that the LB-1 provides separations and concentrations of the contaminating particles which are proportionally about ten times better than the separations obtained with the high gradient, high intensity separator.   

   In the Company’s laboratory good separations of natural diamonds from cubic boron nitride, which is also diamagnetic, have been made. Relatively pure natural diamonds have been separated from diamonds with inclusions of other minerals.

Leading producers of synthetic diamonds (which range in susceptibility from quite strongly to weakly paramagnetic) are using the LB-1 for classifying and grading, and for separating synthetic from natural diamonds.