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Why wood pulp is world's new wonder material

newscientist.com

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Re: Why wood pulp is world's new wonder material

#11

Post by DanBC »

tokenadult wrote: post #2

This brief article about current uses of wood pulp reminded me of something I read in a book back in the 1970s about a proposal to build an aircraft carrier during World War II (when there was a shortage of steel) out of a mixture of wood pulp and water ice. That material was called "pykrete," after the name of its inventor, Geoffrey Pyke. The shortage of steel was alleviated, and plenty of aircraft carriers construc…

While they didn't build battleships out of Pykrete they did build fuel tanks out of laminated paper and plastic. (An early form of fibre glass, using paper instead of glass.)

(http://www.ww2aircraft.net/forum/other-mechanical-systems-te...)

(http://home.earthlink.net/~charlesfelton/id19.html)

Re: Why wood pulp is world's new wonder material

#14

Post by lifeisstillgood »

tl;dr: US Forestry Service: We have too many trees ! How can we sell more of them in a declining building market?

The US Forestry service (certainly by Bill Bryson) is regarded as in thrall with loggers (builds roads for access to heavy equipment, sells trees at a loss acting as a subsidy provider etc.)

So the idea that the great new industry, that involves chopping down trees, should be owned by US forestry service, does not inspire confidence.

   The $1.7 million factory, which is owned by the US 
   Forest Service,
Who remembers the Friends episode where Courtney-Cox was asked to come up with some tasty way to make cakes with fish-chocolate?

Re: Why wood pulp is world's new wonder material

#15

Post by napierzaza »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #14

tl;dr: US Forestry Service: We have too many trees ! How can we sell more of them in a declining building market? The US Forestry service (certainly by Bill Bryson) is regarded as in thrall with loggers (builds roads for access to heavy equipment, sells trees at a loss acting as a subsidy provider etc.) So the idea that the great new industry, that involves chopping down trees, should be owned by US forestry service,…

Yes but as they said they can even use sawdust to make it. Meaning small trees only a few years old (tree farms) would work too. Making it a natural resource that decomposes and is renewable.

Re: Why wood pulp is world's new wonder material

#17

Post by rz2k »

bmckeough wrote: post #5
stephengillie wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's really fascinating. The boat sounds almost like a mobile version of the huge wall of ice in Game of Thrones. I could see this used to construct space stations and vehicles, to be used where the vacuum of space prevented thawing.

If I recall my science correctly water ice would sublimate in the vacuum of space: http://askville.amazon.com/water-evaporate-vacuum/AnswerView...

In fact, this is pretty much what constitutes a comet's tail.

Re: Why wood pulp is world's new wonder material

#18

Post by cmaxwe »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #14

tl;dr: US Forestry Service: We have too many trees ! How can we sell more of them in a declining building market? The US Forestry service (certainly by Bill Bryson) is regarded as in thrall with loggers (builds roads for access to heavy equipment, sells trees at a loss acting as a subsidy provider etc.) So the idea that the great new industry, that involves chopping down trees, should be owned by US forestry service,…

Probably good news for Canada too as we export a lot of trees to the US.

Re: Why wood pulp is world's new wonder material

#19

Post by soperj »

mistercow wrote: post #10

>it is made from a tightly packed array of needle-like crystals which have a strength-to-weight ratio that is eight times better than stainless steel. That's a pretty useless thing to say. What kind of strength? Tensile? Shear? Yield? Maybe this figure is buried somewhere in the paper they linked to, but not in any easy to find place.

Looks like they're probably talking about Tensile strength. (http://www.celluforce.com/en/product_properties.php)

Re: Why wood pulp is world's new wonder material

#20

Post by baddox »

sp332 wrote: post #8
tokenadult wrote: post #2

This brief article about current uses of wood pulp reminded me of something I read in a book back in the 1970s about a proposal to build an aircraft carrier during World War II (when there was a shortage of steel) out of a mixture of wood pulp and water ice. That material was called "pykrete," after the name of its inventor, Geoffrey Pyke. The shortage of steel was alleviated, and plenty of aircraft carriers construc…

I can't find footage, but Mythbusters had a pretty impressive episode where they tested various formulations of pykrete. Jamie's newspaper-based one seemed to be the strongest. A smallish piece of it held a pile of lead, plus Adam's entire weight, while he smacked it with a hammer repeatedly. They built a little boat out of it which disintegrated pretty quickly. The idea that you could build an aircraft carrier was d…

I would consider "plausible" and "ludicrous" to be mutually exclusive.
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