A clear, strong, and thermally insulated wood for energy efficient windows
usda.gov
usda.gov
As someone commented in a previous thread, it is essentially wood fiber reinforced plastic. It would be interesting to compare it with other plastics commonly used instead of glass, like polycarbonate.
Recycling is overrated for cheap products. Plastic is practically impossible to recycle effectively. If it were made to be biodegradable that would make much more sense. But even failing that, there is no shortage of landfill space, as long as it goes to the garage and not to the environment - a huge problem in the developing world and where the plastic in the ocean originates from.
While it's relatively easy to recycle pure plastics for composite materials it's notoriously difficult.
Secondly it has been recycled for decades and is actually a relatively simple material that can be molten, purigied abd re-cast, much like metals can be.
While it's relatively easy to recycle pure plastics, for composite materials it's notoriously difficult.
And metals like aluminum, iron, copper, etc.
If you were going to support this between two panes of glass for waterproofing, you might as well just use the PVA and skip the wood, as it will likely be much cheaper eliminating the harvesting, rotary cutting, delignification, and impregnation steps. Or, you might even put nothing between the two panes of glass, since air is a good insulator as well.
[0] https://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/acs.macromol.5b02477
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/adfm.201907511
>Transparent Wood Could Be the Window of the Future [U.S. Department of Agriculture]
https://www.usda.gov/media/blog/2020/10/01/transparent-wood-...
It being not waterproof/waterresistant (unless painted) doesn't seem to make it a good glass replacement for windows, though.
Possibly as an inner pane(s) of sealed multi-pane windows (with traditional glass on the outside) as - also - since it can be cut with ordinary rotary tools, it probably is not scratch resistant.
The light weight seems to me like the most relevant feature.
Yep, not much different from:
>Possibly as an inner pane(s) of sealed multi-pane windows (with traditional glass on the outside)
I mean, what is the "Or,"?
Seems even more useful than its weight. There is a lot of energy loss from the windows of buildings. Would be a huge gain if that can be brought down significantly.
Someone mentioned that this isn't weatherproof, but it could still be used for the inside plies of a triple glazed window for instance.
Imagine leaving a house unattended in a humid or rainy area for one year, you would come back to swollen up windows which I am sure are far from clear. I guess you would have to replace these windows at least 5-10 times as often as regular glass. Also, glass is 100% recyclable whereas this would produce even more plastic waste.
Some of them might be PVA (though water solubility isn't really a great feature for packaging).
Actually I think it’s closer to 50 million tons (0.5 tons of CO2 per ton of product times 100m tons of flat glass per year).
Relatively we’re talking about ~0.1% of worldwide emissions. Glass production used to emit closer to 1.3tons/ton, but it’s gotten a lot more energy efficient over time.