Improve and enhance a device and method to extract ceramic tiles without damaging them.

This investigation aims to improve and enhance the Xtractor, a device and method designed to remove installed ceramic tiles without damaging them by applying vibration technology. Property insurance companies can then migrate from full floor replacements to spot repair adjustments. Insurance companies can significantly reduce costs, minimize disruption to homeowners because of no need for relocation and content moving, save time, and eliminate the need and cost to replace other items of the property as kitchens, bathrooms, walls, others because of collateral damage when full floor replacement is required. These benefits prove ideal when seeking a method to adjust a claim that cannot be contested in court because the same flooring is re-used. Other repair methods (Like repairs using matching materials) are highly contested due to the insurance “pre-loss condition contract clause” when there are minor aesthetic differences in the materials. We estimate the United States market potential to be 34,000 homeowner insurance claims per year. At our projected cost of service, the market potential is $156.4 million per year. Because this technology can be commercialized in markets other than insurance, the market potential can more than double. The expected environmental impact includes reducing the embodied carbon in buildings by reusing or salvaging flooring. The estimated embodied carbon reduced with our device is 19.57 kg CO2 per m2 of ceramic tile not re-installed, according to a 2020 life cycle study by the Tile Council of North America (Tile Industry). Considering our estimated market potential and if the average house has 80 m2 of tile, the embodied carbon emissions mitigation is projected to be 53.2 million kg CO2 per year. This emissions mitigation is actually much higher, if including the reduced emissions for less collateral damage (No kitchen or other replacements) when spot repairing vs replacing a floor. The other impact is the reduction of workers’ exposure to contaminants when spot repairing a floor. The Xtractor is a patented technology that was tested in ideal conditions. However, further investigation is needed in Phase I when applied to real on-site conditions to determine if a successful harvest (Debonding target tile without damage) can be achieved in at least 70% of the tested conditions. In Phase II, the objective is to improve the effectiveness of the concept, as well as developing a modular, portable, ease-of-use system that can be operated by one person to launch the commercialization process.