Comment by westurner | Hacker News Reader

Comment by westurner | Hacker News Reader

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There are Hemp alloys.

From https://motonetworks.com/worlds-greenest-car-somebody-made-c... :

> It’s actually made using hemp fibers that have been woven together and then sealed and finished with as super hard resin. And once it’s completed you have an insanely strong material that makes steel look weak and brittle. It’s reported to be as much as ten times stronger than steel, yet is lighter than fiberglass.

> The Renew Sports Car was recently featured on an episode of Jay Leno’s Garage [...]*

> Dietzen got the idea from none other than Henry Ford who back in 1941 advocated that Ford should build everything they possibly could out of plant material. Which makes sense because that’s obviously going to drastically reduce material costs which should in turn, reduce the overall price of the car. And thanks to modern technology, Dietzen managed to figure out how to make it all work. If this catches on to the mainstream it could revolutionize the automotive industry across the board. He says that it takes roughly 100lbs of cannabis plants to make a car, which sounds like a lot, but when compared to how much steel and other metals used to create current automobiles that’s just a drop in the bucket.

"Is Hemp Really Stronger Than Steel? How?" re: Tensile Strength and Compression Strength exceeded that of {steel, aluminum, } https://hempfoundation.net/is-hemp-really-stronger-than-stee...

Do high carbon steel rockers rust after a couple years of average road salt?

Which carbon fibers are least health-hazardous to produce?

> It’s actually made using hemp fibers that have been woven together and then sealed and finished with as super hard resin. And once it’s completed you have an insanely strong material that makes steel look weak and brittle.

You want to know how you can quickly tell this is all bullshit?

Steel isn’t brittle. Not in any relative sense to composites. Saying something is weak and brittle… that’s dry spaghetti. Does steel failure remind you of that? Or does composite failure seem closer?

Carbon is brittle. Composites are brittle. Hemp with epoxy is going to be brittle,all relative to steel which has plenty of pliability to it.

Are you sure you know enough about composites to repeat these hemp claims? Because if “makes steel look weak and brittle” didn’t immediately flag for you, you either know a lot more than I’ve learned in 20 years of working around composites and manufacturing or you don’t and just want hemp to be cool.

Hemp might be amazing. But you are posting nonsense that it seems like you have some desire to believe for some reason.

Sure maybe it’ll get out of the lab just around the same time graphene does.

Have you here contested claims that hemp - biocomposite with resin - has greater Tensile Strength and Compressive Strength than steel and aluminum (and carbon fiber with sustainable binder)?

If this were OT, we could reference ScholarlyArticles which describe experiments which return scalar intervals for: Tensile and Compressive Strength, Melting point / deployed heat resistance, production cost in real dollars, carbon cost (reduction in carbon tax credits because unnecessary with alternate sustainable inputs), resistance to corrosion due to sodium chloride, [in-space without water] repairability, magnetizability, water transport and filtration cost, and other factors; with a fair standard panel for relative comparison.

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