The US company has developed a new type of wood, which she says has a ratio of up to 10 times the steel strength to weight, and is up to six times lighter.
Superwood has just started as a commercial product produced by Inventwood, a company founded by Liangbing HU.
More than a decade ago, HU was determined to reinvent one of the oldest building materials known to humanity. While working at the Maryland University Materials Innovation Center, HU, which is now a Yale professor, has found innovative ways to redesign wood. He even made him transparent, removing some of its main components, Lignin, which gives the wood its color and part of his strength.
But its true purpose was to make wood stronger using cellulose, the main plant fiber component and “the most abundant biopolymer on the planet,” HU says.
The breakthrough took place in 2017, when HU first strengthened regular wood by chemically processed it to strengthen natural cellulose, making it a better building material.
The wood was cooked first in a water bath and the chemicals chosen, then hotly pressed to collapse the cell level, making it much denser. At the end of the week -long process, the resulting wood had a strength to weight ratio “higher than most structural metals and alloys” based on the study Published Nature magazine.
Now, many years after HU has improved the process and fed over 140 patents, Superwood began commercially.
Superwood is made using real wood that is chemically treated and compressed. – the courtesy of Inventwood
“When it comes to chemical and practical attitudes, it is wood,” explained Alex Lau, CEO of Inventwood, who joined the business in 2021. In buildings, this would allow structures that can be up to four times lighter than today, said Lau, which means they would be more resistant to earthquakes, and easier to make it easier and easier.
“It looks like wood, and when you try it, it behaves like wood,” Lau added, “except that it is much stronger and better than wood in almost all of us tested aspects.”
Competitive with steel?
Inventwood produces Superwood in its factory Frederick, Maryland, and although production time is now measured in hours rather than days, it takes some time to increase, said Lau.
Initially, the company plans to focus on external programs, such as decking and shell, before internal programs such as wall siding, floor and home furniture, next year.
“People always complain that the furniture breaks over time, and often it is because it freezes or breaks down the joints that are currently made of metal because the wood is not strong enough,” Lau said. He said superwood could be used to replace these parts, as well as bolts, nails and other metal fasteners.
After all, Lau designs that the entire building can be built of supermogwood, although it will require more tests.
Like the original HU experiment, the wood is enhanced by the chemical process, which changes the main structure of cellulose and is very compressed without interfering. “In theory, we can use any wooden material,” said Lau. “In practice, we tried with 19 different types of wood, including bamboo, and it worked with them all.”
Inventwood says Superwood is up to 20 times stronger than regular wood and up to 10 times more resistant to injection, as the natural porous wood structure has collapsed and hardened. This makes it impermeable to fungi and insects. It also receives the highest rating in standard resistance fire tests.
Inventwood says his attempts show that superwood is up to 20 times stronger than regular wood. – the courtesy of Inventwood
Currently, Superwood costs more than regular wood and has a greater carbon trace, but LA said that carbon emissions are 90% lower than steel production.
He added that the target is “not to be cheaper than wood, but to be competitive with steel” when production increases;
Wood trend
Other types of engineering wood have long existed as building materials, but Inventwood says that these are simply rearranged pieces of wood, kept with glue, not the wood that has been replaced at molecular level, such as superwood.
Wood construction has been reborn in recent years and the wood is now used to build skyscrapers. Milwaukee, already the world’s tallest wood tower, 284 feet (87 meters) ascended MKE-plans to build even higher at a height of 600 feet (183 meters).
Currently, concrete is the most used building material on the ground and, although its production has grown in recent years, concrete creates 7% of the world’s carbon emissions in the world.
New South Wales University, Australia, Australia, which is not involved in Inventwood, said Philip Oldfield, Australia, head of the school, said that many other building materials Timber have environmental benefits because its production processes are less intense than steel and concrete. “Wood products can be considered a long-term carbon accumulation system, and construction with wood could see the lock of our cities,” Carbon dismantling in buildings for a long time, “he said.
However, he emphasizes that existing engineering wood products are already competing with steel and concrete. “More wooden buildings are not really a need for a greater force,” he explained, “the fact that the construction industry avoids risk and is changing slowly.”
To see more wood in buildings, he said we need better education, pilot projects and improved regulatory systems: “But stronger wood products such as this superwood could allow architects to create larger spaces and more durable finishes with wood, which would certainly be useful and could promote more wood uptake.”
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