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.''"

Comments

bamboo car

[Xicor]

i can see it now. cars made out of bamboo instead of plastic and metal. http://www.cartell.ie/car_chec...

Re:bamboo car

[arglebargle_xiv]

The Indian truck manufactuer Tata has been using wood as a construction material for quite some time now.

Other materials used include chewing gum, rubber bands, old newspapers, and spit.

Negative Effects...

[IonOtter]

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.

Re:Negative Effects...

[Anonymous Coward]

Bamboo, the spreading kind like yellow groove, starts to spread three years after planting. It never stops! Bamboo is a long lived plant, around 99 years. We have cut all our culms (stalks) and now the plant has reverted to a grass-like growth habit. But, no doubt, if it is not constantly mowed, it will revert to its normal habits, reaching up to 35 feet in height. Underground, about five inches, it is one interconnected mass. It spreads via rhizomes about five feet a year or more, in all directions. My advice is to plant the clumping types, far easier to manage. It is a beautiful plant.

Bamboo Bicycle

[Anonymous Coward]

Bamboo is already making its way into bicycle frame design.
http://calfeedesign.com/products/bamboo/

Re:Bamboo Bicycle

[ShanghaiBill]

I've seen bamboo used in China for scaffolding in the construction of steel and concrete buildings 20+ storeys tall.

Bamboo is safer than steel for scaffolding. It you fall into a bamboo scaffold, it will flex, absorbing much of the impact energy. When steel scaffolding was first used in China, there were several fatalities that would not have happened with bamboo. So the construction workers refused to return to work until the steel was taken down and replaced with bamboo.

Re:Bamboo Bicycle

[smart_ass]

Having seen the bamboo scaffolding in both Hong Kong and China first-hand, the bigger issue (from my point of view) is not the energy absorption, but rather the assembly / erection. Unlike steel scaffolding the has a defined assembly, bamboo tends to be assembled by lashing together the various bits with inconsistent amounts of rope, twine or those plastic packing strips.

The problem here is that you are at the mercy (moreso) of he who assembled the scaffolding. If they were cheap or in a hurry things may fall apart. I was in Hong Kong during a severe wind storm around 5 years ago. It was bad enough that on the news they were advising ALL residents of all of Hong Kong to stay inside unless urgent.

Several sets of scaffolding fell down during that storm.

Recycleable?

[craighansen]

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.

Re:Recycleable?

[guises]

Carbon fiber is made from fossil fuels, bamboo is a fairly efficient agricultural product. Recycling between them may be similar, I don't know about that, but that isn't the whole story.

Re:Recycleable?

[deathguppie]

Alright, I've been working in the materials industries for years, so I can see there is a lot of strange info here.

• First off carbon fiber is what you have after you burn everything else off. Yup that's how it's made, and it's not so environmentally friendly
• Second, carbon is the hardest substance known to man. mixing it in varied amounts with a strong yet flexible binder like epoxy allows a product to have the best of both worlds in varied amounts, as per design.
• Third, bamboo depends on it's cell structure for stiffness, and while it may be very stiff, it is not nearly as strong as carbon fiber by weight, and cannot be (carbon is as stiff as it gets)
• Fourth, once the bamboo is soaked in epoxy it is no longer environmentally friendly. It was up till that point but no longer
• Fifth, bamboo can rot, carbon can't. Which means that products made of bamboo have a life span, after which they will need a home int the dirt somewhere. Not necessarily so for carbon fiber
• Sixth, Carbon fiber used in a thermal set mold, using a blend of carbon, and nylon woven together instead of saturated with epoxy is one of the most durable products I have ever seen, and because it is a thermoplastic based binder, it could most likely be recycled.

There are many ways to use composites, of every type. In some cases not having to replace the product may be more environmentally sound than making it out of something semi-biodegradable like bamboo and epoxy. I'm just saying, that there are ups and downs to everything. It takes years and much useage to define the criteria, for environmentally sound, with any product. Wasn't to long ago I remember ethonal and biodesel were going to save the planet, and now we realize it's really not much better after all.

Oh...I dunno...

[Mashiki]

Hey guys, guys?! Someone tell me, are cats the next thing in vermin control?

One word answer:

[bmo]

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.

--
BMO

Expect the unexpected

[vux984]

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 :)

Hemp

[bill_mcgonigle]

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.

Re:Hemp

[dryeo]

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.

All depends on the variety with modern hemp strains bred for low psycho-activity to make it more acceptable. That along with allowing the males to flourish and fertilize the females produces hemp that won't get you high.
Hemp is a wonder plant, the fiber is very useful, the plast left over from extracting the fiber also has numerous uses including plastic like. The seeds have a high oil content, a very high grade oil useful for industrial uses, as well as for food containing all the essential oils and the seeds are one of the few sources of complete proteins, much like soybeans. Basically you could live a long time on nothing but hemp.
Then there are the recreational and medicinal uses of the psycho-active strains.

Bamboo Rayon socks are awesome

[Wraithlyn]

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.

Re:or...

[bugs2squash]

Per wikipedia Ultimate Tensile Strength of S-glass is 4710MPa and UTS of Carbon fiber is 4137. I know that density is often mixed into the equation for strength, but even so... The biggest thing Carbon has going for it is its stiffness.