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Biodegradable Fibers As Strong As Steel Made From Wood Cellulose

Posted by Soulskill on from the wood-is-the-new-steel dept.

Zothecula writes "A team of researchers working at Stockholm's KTH Royal Institute of Technology claim to have developed a way to make cellulose fibers stronger than steel on a strength-to-weight basis. In what is touted as a world first, the team from the institute's Wallenberg Wood Science Center claim that the new fiber could be used as a biodegradable replacement for many filament materials made today from imperishable substances such as fiberglass, plastic, and metal. And all this from a substance that requires only water, wood cellulose, and common table salt to create it. The full academic paper is available from Nature Communications."

3 of 82 comments (clear)

  1. Stronger than steel by LordLucless · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Stronger than steel is cool and all, but that doesn't necessarily mean "all the same properties of steel". Durability, heat tolerance, reaction to moisture and a host of other things are likely to mean it's not a drop-in replacement for fibreglass/plastic/metal.

    --
    Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
    1. Re:Stronger than steel by abhi_beckert · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Stronger than steel is cool and all, but that doesn't necessarily mean "all the same properties of steel". Durability, heat tolerance, reaction to moisture and a host of other things are likely to mean it's not a drop-in replacement for fibreglass/plastic/metal.

      Fibreglass is terrible at all of the things you just listed and we use it for all kinds of things. It just has to be coated with a thin protective layer.

    2. Re:Stronger than steel by Megol · · Score: 4, Informative

      Most materials have advantages and disadvantages. Wood is an excellent material for many things and steel is a bad material for many things.
      Unlike what many people believe carbon fiber (or other synthetic fibers like kevlar/aramid, dyneema, zylon) while stronger than steel are a bad material for many constructions as they often have a higher flexibility, higher sensitivity to things like UV radiation, abrasion etc. that have to be compensated for. This results in many products being worse than e.g. a steel construction but still being sold to the people that think it must be superior. Designing and using composites properly often is a very expensive process.

      But again wood is an excellent material - it is flexible, strong (with natural fiber reinforcement), easy to form, renewable and reasonable priced. Even the above mentioned sensitivity of wet environments is easy to circumvent. There are a lot of natural wood which are naturally protected against water and other woods can easily be impregnated.