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Hardened wood as a renewable alternative to steel and plastic

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Re: Hardened wood as a renewable alternative to steel and plastic

#261

Post by elzbardico »

boplicity wrote: post #222
entropicgravity wrote: post #78

Earlier 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…

Steel production is one of the largest contributors to global C02 emissions. Reducing it by 30% isn't a solution. Unfortunately, zero-carbon-emissions steel is still not feasibile, which is a major, major issue for the health of our planet.

We have to start somewhere don’t we?

Re: Hardened wood as a renewable alternative to steel and plastic

#262

Post by ksec »

westurner wrote: post #14

From "Hemp Wood: A Comprehensive Guide" https://www.buildwithrise.com/stories/hempwood-the-sustainab... : > HempWood is priced competitively to similar cuts of black walnut. You can purchase 72" HempWood boards for between $13 and $40 as of the date of publishing. HempWood also sells carving blocks, cabinets, and kits to make your own table. Prices for table kits range from $175 to $300. Jul 5, 2021 […] > Is Hemp Woo…

FWIU = From What I Understand

Re: Hardened wood as a renewable alternative to steel and plastic

#263

Post by CodeGlitch »

dx034 wrote: post #248
gbrown wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seaweed is great - it also pulls excess nitrogen out of the water, can be co-cropped with bivalves, can be fed to cows for decreased methane production, can be eaten directly in many forms… If we had an actual price on carbon seaweed production would be a boom industry.

Couldn't you use it in large tanks to suck out CO² directly from the air? What makes this more expensive than currently proposed alternatives? Even if you don't use the seaweed in the end, you could just dry and bury it I guess? EDIT: After some research I found an interesting article addressing this: https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/09/19/1035889/kelp-car...

That is an interesting link, thanks.

Re: Hardened wood as a renewable alternative to steel and plastic

#264

Post by politician »

Chris2048 wrote: post #257
politician wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can’t figure out how to store a minimal quantity of radioactive waste in a purpose-built salt mine dozens of miles away from any small town. I have no faith that we can find places to store megatons of plastic waste.

funny question: could we mix the nuclear waste with the plastic to make (the plastic) degrade faster?

That's brilliant. I would love to learn if that could work and wouldn't just create a bunch of radioactive plastic.

Re: Hardened wood as a renewable alternative to steel and plastic

#265

Post by Chris2048 »

politician wrote: post #264
Chris2048 wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

funny question: could we mix the nuclear waste with the plastic to make (the plastic) degrade faster?

That's brilliant. I would love to learn if that could work and wouldn't just create a bunch of radioactive plastic.

Even if it did, if it ended up enriching the soil carbon-content, would it matter?

Re: Hardened wood as a renewable alternative to steel and plastic

#266

Post by hilbert42 »

canadian_tired wrote: post #64

Wood is renewable when you can grow it, cut it up into useful shapes, then at the end of its useful life, compost it. As soon as you add a shit load of processing and plastic and other stuff it's not "wood" anymore than gasoline is a dead dinosaur. As for things like plywood that use glue for the laminations...glue is the most expensive and important part of the product. Not the wood so much. Replacing steel? I don't…

"But it is now old and not so sexy."

Yeah, maybe. But you're right, when it comes to metals, steel's vastly most substantial component, iron is about the most abundant metallic element in the universe, so it ain't gonna disappear from our manufacturing materials list anytime soon.

Iron and steels have their obvious problems - rust for instance, bad performance high high temperatures is another and it'd be nice if iron had properties more like say titanium but that's wishful thinking.

Taming iron to behave the way we want it to has always been and still is a major problem. For example, stainless steel is expensive and it's always been a bit of a kludge (the need for hundreds of different varieties of alloys attest to that; same goes for hardness, for instance, the many tool-steel-like alloys that are needed by industry).

If anything, we need considerably more material science research to make iron alloys much better than they are now and thus make them appear very sexy to everyone's eyes.

Re: Hardened wood as a renewable alternative to steel and plastic

#267

Post by hilbert42 »

osense wrote: post #124
sfink wrote: post #12

I'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,…

It depends on what you mean by mineral oil. Without definition it's about as useless as saying I've painted something in 'color' rather than specifying what color one used.

Whilst flammable, and for the simplest ones, even explosive - most small straight-chained alkanes as often found in mineral oils are reasonably innocuous in that they're not considered organically poisonous (at least in small amounts), however that can change greatly the moment you add certain additives to change their properties (as is often done in commercial products).

The most notorious and outrageous example being when Thomas Midgley Jr added tetraethyllead to gasoline/petroleum in the 1920s thus managing to poison most of the population to at least some extent.

Re: Hardened wood as a renewable alternative to steel and plastic

#268

Post by Animats »

dan353hehe wrote: post #255
Animats wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's all? No additives during the compression? And nobody figured this out before?

It’s often the obvious and simple things that are overlooked, because they obviously won’t work :)

I'm surprised that this wasn't invented back when Henry Ford was trying to use agricultural products in autos. (The "hemp car" urban legend comes from that project.) Plastics were expensive, so there were attempts to use agricultural products as filler. The trouble was that cellular materials swell when wet. Plastic+ag waste didn't hold shape if used for exterior auto body parts. Same problem as Masonite, particle board, etc.

With enough heat and pressure, does this new material avoid that problem? Or is it a "do not get wet" product.

Re: Hardened wood as a renewable alternative to steel and plastic

#269

Post by hilbert42 »

NoSorryCannot wrote: post #183
osense wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Right, another instance of where the mineral product is to be much preferred over the so-called natural one is with turpentine.

Mineral turpentine is to be much preferred over the natural one because the latter contains organic wood terpenes many if which are toxic and proven carcinogens - after all it stands to reason that they're dangerous, as trees have evolved to produce them to fend off or poison insects that attack them.

I find it somewhat distressing to see so many carpenters and woodworkers using terpenes-laced turpentine because they believe 'natural' is better.

It's time this dangerous myth was dispelled.

Re: Hardened wood as a renewable alternative to steel and plastic

#270

Post by quixoticelixer- »

AdamN wrote: post #164
carlisle_ wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s something to be said for the fact that harvesting wood is much more environmentally friendly than petroleum. At the very least a “wood spill” doesn’t exist as far as I know.

Petroleum is definitely more environmentally friendly than the timber industry. You probably haven't driven around tree farms - monoculture that destroys the environment for hundreds of square miles. Even worse is when they pulp existing forest for things like toilet paper: https://www.rcinet.ca/en/2019/02/26/u-s-use-of-toilet-paper-...

lmao
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