I'm sold. Where can I get some of this hardened wood? I would like to experiment with it and maybe incorporate it into products.
Most of the sources for this stuff I have found sell it as deck boards.
Hardened wood as a renewable alternative to steel and plastic
181–190 of 282 posts
Re: Hardened wood as a renewable alternative to steel and plastic
#182One of the steps to produce it seems to be soaking it in mineral oil. Maybe I missed something, but it seems pretty strong to call it renewable if it's made from fossil petroleum.
Re: Hardened wood as a renewable alternative to steel and plastic
#183I've been intrigued for a while about various modified wood technologies (eg hardened wood, transparent wood), but I'm always disappointed because it usually ends up just being a minor support structure for a very non-wood material (generally epoxy). This one shows a compression step, so maybe it's different, but I'd really like more info on whether this is actually renewable or sustainable in any interesting sense.…
As an aside, the article mentions: > After the material is processed and carved into the desired shape, it is coated in *mineral oil* to extend its lifetime. I was thinking how, surely, mineral oil isn't food-safe and well-fit for use on a utensil. However, it turns out that while low-grade mineral oil is proved carcinogenic, the high-grade version is not believed to be so, unless dispersed in a mist. And apparently,…
Mineral oil can be found in most pharmacies marketed as a laxative. It's a common oil to use for cutting boards and other applications in proximity to food.
Re: Hardened wood as a renewable alternative to steel and plastic
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
No expert here but I believe it depends on how it decomposes. If wood rots at the surface, my understanding is more carbon is released into the atmosphere but if it is buried or decomposed using fungi or soil microbes, more carbon is captured into the soil. Forests have a lot of decaying and decomposing deadfall wood but still seem to be a carbon sink so it may be a layering thing...
That's the reason you use wood chips and bark for mulch in a garden; to add carbon to the soil.
It isn't the usual primary reason. You use these things to provide a mulch layer over the top of tilth; it suppresses weed germination.
If all you want is to add organics, you'd probably fork in manure.
Re: Hardened wood as a renewable alternative to steel and plastic
#185Earlier quoted context omitted.
magnesium is sort of a more expensive version of al.
In that it's one electron from it (like Silicon)? Magnesium is 2.2x stronger, 1.08x harder, and 2.05x more costly, 0.65x as thermally conductive and, 0.64x as dense. Think I'm missing your similarity metric
"nl" already brought few points. As a practical test: take a piece made of cast magnesium (alloy) or cast aluminum (alloy). It'd be hard to easily tell each other apart, save for using a weak acid. Their strength is similar (esp. when alloyed, still worse off for the aluminum) but magnesium is non-trivially lighter. Here, a random quote [0]
Magnesium is also better at casting components with thinner walls and tighter tolerances than aluminum. However, even with the many advantages of magnesium, aluminum remains a less expensive alternative for die casting.
[0]: https://diecasting.com/blog/the-difference-between-aluminum-...
Re: Hardened wood as a renewable alternative to steel and plastic
#186Earlier quoted context omitted.
magnesium is sort of a more expensive version of al.
In that it's one electron from it (like Silicon)? Magnesium is 2.2x stronger, 1.08x harder, and 2.05x more costly, 0.65x as thermally conductive and, 0.64x as dense. Think I'm missing your similarity metric
It is also very dangerous to machine. https://www.china-machining.com/blog/cnc-machining-magnesium...
Re: Hardened wood as a renewable alternative to steel and plastic
#187Earlier quoted context omitted.
In addition progress making steel with a lot less CO2, by using hydrogen (and other techniques) instead of coal has come a long way. This isn't just pie in the sky, the world's second largest steel maker plans to reduce CO2 by 30% before 2030. [1] And of course steel is eminently recyclable. I'm not against wood but steel has some good long term attributes as well. [1] https://corporate.arcelormittal.com/sustainabili…
You can also coke iron with carbon from plastic. It's still not super great. But it does reuse plastics which don't get recycled enough.
Reusing plastics is honestly one of those "do we need to" things these days. The theory is that if we reuse them, then the waste doesn't pollute the environment - but landfilled plastic waste is basically sequestered carbon, and plastic pollution is ocean-borne and mostly being directly produced by poor environmental practice - not unrecycled plastic waste or landfill escape.
Re: Hardened wood as a renewable alternative to steel and plastic
#188For people who are interested in Timber Building / Construction. The World's Tallest Timber Buildings [1], Why Finland is Building a Wood City [2]. Why There Are No Timber Skyscrapers [3], Why All Buildings Should Be Timber [4] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3JqSsc8ZKk [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4QYkEpw9pA [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_8LlcuV0gc [4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ieBVNgMkcpw
All of these sound good, but the caveat is that they are wood + epoxy/resin/glue.
Why is that a caveat?
Re: Hardened wood as a renewable alternative to steel and plastic
#189(Can't read the damn paper, even with University journal access. Why is academia so fundamentally stupid? Is it not obvious to a scientist that when your paper comes out it would be a good idea for a lot of people to be able to read it?
Thanks to Cell Press for extracting profit to hold back scientific progress.)
Anyway I presume this relates to the group's previous work, where they boil the wood in sodium hydroxide to leach the lignin and then compress it. The final product doesn't have any resin additives, so is not a composite.
Re: Hardened wood as a renewable alternative to steel and plastic
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
What are the limits? Input costs, current economy of scale?
Scale, reportedly. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Qy6awPeric
What an excellent video overview!
That does look like there's still a lot of manual labor in the depicted production process... Automation and clean energy.