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Is Bamboo the Next Carbon Fibre?
An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from the BBC about one very cool building material: "Real carbon fibre, mind, is still just as wondrous as it was in the last century, even if a bit more commonplace in road cars. But it's still very expensive to make in large pieces and quantities, it requires copious energy to manufacture, can be very brittle if made poorly, is not recyclable and can impose a detrimental impact of the environment when being produced. In other words, it is ripe for disruption. Technology stands still for no one. But could nature provide carbon fibre's replacement? So argues Gary Young, a renowned manufacturer of surfboards who has spent his life pioneering alternative materials use for that industry. 'With the right approach, bamboo can be used in many applications in the automotive world where its performance qualities can better carbon fibre's,' Young says. 'Plus, it does not have a negative effect on the environment.''"
i can see it now. cars made out of bamboo instead of plastic and metal. http://www.cartell.ie/car_chec...
Well, that depends on a few things?
1. What you plant.
2. Where you plant it.
3. Who your neighbors are, and your current relationship with them.
Plant the wrong kind, or plant it without a 3' deep root barrier, and you will quickly have a neighborhood war on your hands. Expand this to commercial levels of production, and you could make a lot of people very angry with you.
One thing is certain, though? Once you plant it, it is THERE for 15 years, at the very least. And you'll be exceptionally busy for every bit of those 15 years.
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Or just keep using completely safe fiberglass as a not so strong but almost as light alternative like they have been for years in race cars. In fact, you know what's usually around the carbon fiber layers in cars? Fiberglass or at least the same epoxy that they use to make it.
Bamboo is already making its way into bicycle frame design.
http://calfeedesign.com/products/bamboo/
Carbon fiber itself is just as recycleable as bamboo fiber. However bamboo, once combined with epoxy, it's just as unrecycleable and toxic as carbon fiber. I've got several ASUS bamboo laptops, where bamboo was used instead of plastic for a portion of the case. It was marketed as better for the environment, but to me it was just more esthetically pleasing than plastic. The bamboo components held up better than the hinges and the electronics.
Hey guys, guys?! Someone tell me, are cats the next thing in vermin control?
Om, nomnomnom...
No.
Longer answer: No and it's not as eco-friendly as people would like you to believe.
1. You need to farm it. Farms in general are never eco-friendly as they eliminate habitat.
2. You still need to use epoxy to bond the strands together. This epoxy is nearly identical to the epoxy used in carbon fiber and fiberglass and is just as nasty.
3. The claim that it would break down in landfills is bogus. Material decomposition in landfills is slow due to the anaerobic nature of landfills. Also, bamboo encased in epoxy isn't going to decompose like typical un-worked bamboo.
And since bamboo is weaker than carbon fiber, but more expensive than fiberglass, I expect it to never take the place of either, except in decorative modes.
Yes, I know, you can build a bamboo frame bicycle that performs well, but it's expensive and a novelty. When it's not done well....recoil in horror: http://www.instructables.com/i...
Yeah, I'll take a steel frame, plox.
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BMO
I think they mean, the first carbon fiber. (Not really, but certainly prior to synthetic carbon fiber).
.: Semper Absurda
expect the unexpected unintended side effects.
I'm always glad to see new developments in materials science, but one of the potential issues that jumped out at me when I see them looking at plant based materials for cars is whether it will be tasty.
Not that I envision a horde of Panda's attacking our new bamboo cars, but insects and rodents might well. There was a change made to the plastic sheath in automotive wiring some years ago to use a soy based coating, for example, and it turns out mice liked to eat it; dramatically increasing rodent damage to vehicle wiring -- I seem to recall an article where at least one manufacturer combated the issue by adding 'spices' to the coating to make it less appetizing.
No idea if that's a concern with bamboo; but its something to consider; along with any number of other things maybe nobody has thought about. Only way to find out is to try, right :)
PHYSICAL, CHEMICAL, AND ME CHANICAL PROPERTIES OF BAMBOO AND ITS UTILIZATION POTENTIAL FOR FIBERBOARD MANUFACTURING
That was the first result of about 299,000 for the simple Google query "physical properties of bamboo." Have a nice day.
Write failed: Broken pipe
Amen.
In my previous house, bamboo was all over the back garden. You couldn't get rid of it. Every summer we'd cut it all down and burn it, and every winter it would come back. Sometimes even in the same summer. You could walk over the grass and suddenly impale yourself upon an 2-inch-tall bamboo shoot that was taking root - no kidding.
It grew so fast that you had to get every bit or a few weeks later you'd have a stem that you need a hacksaw to cut through. And it could easily grow 6-8 feet tall and become a hazard.
Pretty much ruined the tiny garden we had. The stuff is a pain, and that was just in the UK.
Useful construction material, no doubt, but we've known that for thousands of years. The problem is that where it falls short is biodegradement, so you have to do unnatural things to it so that it won't biodegrade. And farming it properly is no mean feat if you care about the surrounding lands not becoming unofficial bamboo farms too.
I'd happily build a house, or a tree house, or just about anything from it. But don't put one seed of it near my back garden, thanks.
Henry Ford specified hemp fiber-based panels for his cars a hundred years ago, but a psychopathic government leveraged its corruption to benefit the tree pulp and synthetic fibers bosses, while claiming it was about social values.
IIRC you'd need a blunt 4' long and 18" across to get a buzz from hemp, and you'd die from smoke inhalation first. It's a great cash crop for farmers, can grow in less fertile soil (while improving it), produces Omega-3 "on the vine" and is far more productive per-acre than trees. So, a clear economic threat to those friends of the powerful.
It also makes fantastic long, strong fibers, once considered essential to national security.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Wrong. The body was made from waste cotton fibre bonded with phenol resin. It's a great material - light, strong, reasonably eco-friendly, non-corrosive. It's not a million miles from carbon fibre or even what this article is talking about. The rest of the Trabant was a conventional spot-welded steel monocoque.
It's lazy stereotyping to mock the Trabant without actually looking at how it was made. Sure, the design was dated and yes, the engines were terrible, but they were reliable and cheap, and actually a much more efficient car than most of the gas-guzzlers made in the west.
My main gripe about the Trabant's build quality was the poor panel fit, but that's not an inherent drawback of the materials it was made from, just a side-effect of somewhat old-fashioned tooling.
My feet would always be cold and clammy after a day at work. Tried a bunch of different sock types... cotton, wool, Merino wool, synthetics, etc. Nothing helped.
Then I tried Rayon from Bamboo socks (these guys), and my god what a difference. Feet are dry and warm all day. They're the only kind I wear now.
"Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
I find it incredibly ironic that the British Broadcasting Corporation website is blocking all British people from reading their news articles.
Sometimes you have to give it a try before you determine if it delivers a good enough value.
Remember just because something isn't worth its price doesn't mean that the price is prohibitive.
Example: a local place might start serving a $30 hamburger (and I'm sure some places do have burgers higher than that). $30 is a lot for a hamburger, but in and of itself it's not really that much money. I might be willing to try one and see how it is. Afterwards I might decide that it really wasn't worth the price. That doesn't mean that I could have known that before the purchase, or that I "shouldn't" have bought it.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain