Fascinating article on a new type of treated wood *LINK*

Re: Fascinating article on a new type of treated w

Bill Tindall, E.Tn.

The article reeks of boondoggle.

Want to know what cellulose looks like without lignin......it's called cotton in the native state, or paper after refining wood. As described, the product is compressed paper.

So this stuff has all these favorable thermal properties. Will it survive outdoors without paint covering it? No mention of this issue.

Removing lignin from wood....it's called pulping, the process to make paper. There must be something special about using hydrogen peroxide that is not mentioned for this chemical, while used to bleach paper, is not used to remove lignin to make paper. Way to expensive to do so. In conventional pulping to remove lignin the chemicals are recycled and the process generates energy, not uses it. In fact, paper mills sometimes sell electricity.

One other issue...

Jason Roehl in Lafayette, IN

The article boasted of the wood's ability to radiate heat away--great for climates that are hot year-round, but they made no mention of what happens to a building clad with this stuff in the winter, when one would WANT it to retain heat.

Jason

Neat stuff!

Re: Fascinating article on a new type of treated w

Keith Newton

Humm, MDF without the heavy glue? ;-)

no

Bill Tindall, E.Tn.

no- MDF doesn't have the lignin removed.

The process described is a form of wood pulping with a post pulping step of compressing the cellulose(paper) into a compact sheet. It is the post pulping step that might be intriguing. What makes it work? Is it the pressing or is it because the cellulose is no longer cellulose after the peroxide treatment? Could it be done on recycled paper? Now that would be something to get interested in.

Re: Fascinating article on a new type of treated w

John in NM

If that picture is of the actual product, then it looks like the unique part of this is that they've invented a way of removing lignin without pulping the wood, leaching it out and preserving the grain orientation of the cellulose.

The radiant effect is the most intriguing part to me, though I expect practical application would have some fatal downside.

Articles that tout wonderful properties of wonderful new materials without mention of the inevitable downsides (whether fatal or not) always strike me as too promotional to be believed at face value. We have countless aphorisms to remind one to use their common sense, first that occurs to me here is that there's no such thing as a free lunch.

Re: Fascinating article on a new type of treated w

Bill Tindall, E.Tn.

removing lignin is pulping. The fiber orientation can be preserved in paper as you know. Paper can tear reliably in one direction.

I looked up the original article which appears in a credible journal, Science. The article does not describe how the stuff is made. It deals entirely with the thermal research and glosses over the fact that this stuff will not survive outside without surface treatment. It is not clear what the pulping step does that results in the ability of the cellulose to compress into the structure described. A patent has been applied for. Unclear what the claims are- the material or the pulping or the compression.

Re: Fascinating article on a new type of treated w

John in NM

I didn't know it was possible to pulp without mechanical separation of the matter. From that point of view the process seems less interesting. Mold is sure going to love it though

Re: Homasote?

William Duffield

It's only been manufactured for a century.