Making buildings, cars and planes from materials based on plant fibres

economist.com

66 points·Turukawa··8 comments

Henry Ford created a car body from soybeans over eighty years ago:

https://www.thehenryford.org/collections-and-research/digita...

Their aim is to create a “super wood” that is stronger than most metals. Their approach is to treat blocks of wood with sodium hydroxide and sodium sulphate in a chemical process similar to that used to remove lignin from papermaking pulp. The difference is that they remove only enough lignin to make the wooden blocks easier to compress. They do that by squeezing the treated wood at around 100°C, which causes most of the pores and tubelike fibres within the wood to collapse. This increases its density threefold and its strength elevenfold.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardboard

The two biggest disadvantages of plant fibres are [1] they're flammable, and [2] easily damaged by moisture. Maybe I'm just cynical, but this feels like it can only advance planned obolescence --- in the same way as the rest of the "biodegradable" materials trend.

Not if encased in limestone or concrete. See hempcrete and fibre cement for instance.

Was it William Gibson's The Peripheral which writes about cars where the exterior is made of cardboard?

The East German auto manufacturer Trabant made cars with panels made from cotton, wood pulp, and glue (similar to fiberglass, but with wood fiber). I don't remember which USSR manufacturer it was, but there was another car with cow hides for body panels.

I got a paywall unfortunately. Seems interesting.

Here's a bookmarklet to get around that pay"wall" https://bookmarkify.it/9810

Here’s another article about it https://www.popsci.com/carbon-fiber-from-plants#page-3

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