In one of the most polluted countries in the world, an Indian architect has developed a revolutionary way of transforming carbon emissions into beautiful tiles. A combined mix of sustainability, craftsmanship, design and technology.
He is Tejas Sidnal and is the founder of the Indian startup Carbon Craft Design in Mumbai. His was the idea of the AIR-INK device, capable of extracting carbon dioxide from the air and combining it with a mixture of powdered marble chips to create design tiles.
“Each carbon tile is equivalent to cleaning 30,000 litres of air! Moreover, these tiles consume only one-fifth of the energy required to manufacture vitrified tiles. This means, instead of burning the tiles to come up with the finished product, we use a hydraulic press that helps us in manufacturing these tiles,” says Tejas Sidnal, the founder of Carbon Craft Design.
All heavy metals and harmful components are removed, then the craftsmen make the tiles in six monochromatic shades that range from black, across four shades of gray all the way to white.
Each tile is handmade from start to finish. The process involves cutting, shaping, joining, filling and finally the formation of the tile. The captured carbon is first processed to remove highly toxic metal impurities and then melted with a mixture of cement and marble derivatives to manufacture carbon tiles.
This process requires much less energy than generic tile production. After developing a prototype, the team contacted traditional handcrafted cement tile manufacturers in Gujarat and Tamil Nadu for large-scale production.
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Sources: The Better India / Carbon Craft Design
