Hacker News Reader

Comment by anshumankmr | Hacker News Reader

But by making wood transparent, would it not be even more detrimental to the environment? Plus at least glass is made of silica which we have no real shortage of and it can be recycled as well.

View on HN

In the spirit of "best thing we can do with carbon is bury it", this could be great for the environment. Assumptions: less energy used for production than melting glass, easier process and shorter transport distances, recycling glass takes more energy than burying / decomposing the wood, we get even more commercial reasons for planting trees.

The problems could be in how long that "wood-glass" lasts. Will you see cracks soon? Will any insects start drilling your windows?

Given that it's infused with epoxy, as they say, I imagine it would last a long time, and I don't think it would be susceptible to insect damage.

This is wood soaked in epoxy. The epoxy should provide plenty of protection (note that lots of houses are made of regular wood, so I don't think this is much of a problem anyway).

> note that lots of houses are made of regular wood

Yes, but that's why in certain areas you need to do termite inspections because the treated wood doesn't provide 100% protection. Also the wooden parts are normally protected by other materials to not be exposed to rain and rot - in this one the epoxy layer would likely do that, but still, it depends on good coverage/protection.

Leave one side of this transparent wood unpainted and termites would be easy to spot.

s/one/inner/

Actually there is a shortage of glass-grade silica. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20191108-why-the-world-is...

That's not what the article says. There is a shortage of sand for cement, which needs rough, sharp, unweathered sand. For glass there is no shortage at all.

why do we still not mandate concrete aggregates must be recycled material?

surely industry will find ways to reprocess recycled material to fit requirements??? or use more concrete or more rebar or something?

can the folks who mine river or marine sand be tasked to put desert sand back to replace what they mined?

Glass is a poor insulator. They're claiming transparent wood would have better insulating properties, retaining heat inside buildings. A lot of energy is lost through windows.

That was already solved by just adding a second sheet of glass with an air gap

We have no shortage of wood either. It is a renewable resource, and it removes carbon dioxide from the air.

But we don't have an infinite supply of petroleum to make epoxy

I'm sure you could make it out of corn.

Yes, but can we make out of corn economically? If we don't care about price, we can just use 100% renewables to make glass.

And unlike corn-based plastics, the raw materials for glass aren't food.

And let’s not forget that to make hydrogen peroxide we need hydrogen. How do we make hydrogen at scale? Hydrocarbons (e.g. natural gas)

Geologists: "We May Be Slowly Running Out Of Rocks"

https://www.theonion.com/geologists-we-may-be-slowly-running...

;)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com