Dr Aled Roberts, Dekiln

Reimagining our energy-intense ceramics industry 

The challenge

Production of traditional ceramic tiles used in our homes, schools, hospitals, and high streets – made by heating clay in a kiln at extremely high temperatures – is energy intensive and produces a high volume of carbon emissions. 

The innovation

Dekiln, a company led by Dr Aled Roberts, has developed an innovative new technology that uses 20 times less carbon to produce ceramics, offering an environmentally friendly alternative to the current processes. The company is replacing traditional clay with tiles made from over 98% recycled gypsum, a material commonly found in construction waste such as plasterboard. Crucially, this process does not require the use of a kiln, dramatically reducing the energy needed to manufacture the tiles.

With the Green Future Fellowship funding, Dr Roberts aims to address this process’s current engineering challenges and collaborate with industry partners to test and integrate the new method into current manufacturing systems, scaling this technology from the laboratory to full industrial production. 

The innovator 

Dr Roberts successfully invented this new technology during COVID-19, while working in the cellar of his house with limited ingredients and products that he could find at home, such as chickpea water and egg whites. Taking inspiration from how we historically used the natural materials around us to create products, he discovered a process to make a material that looks and feels like a ceramic tile but without needing to be fired in a kiln.  

He immediately realised the potential of this largely accidental discovery and has spent recent years founding and building up Dekiln to develop this new technology. Prior to this he was an academic at the University of Manchester and is a trained materials engineer.  

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From experimenting with the products around me in my home lab during COVID-19 to developing tiles that will contribute to a net zero future, this journey shows the power of innovation.