Advanced materials design based on waste wood and bark

Abstract

Trees belong to the largest living organisms on Earth and plants in general are one of our main renewable resources. Wood as a material has been used since the beginning of humankind. Today, forestry still provides raw materials for a variety of applications, for example in the building industry, in paper manufacturing and for various wood products. However, many parts of the tree, such as reaction wood, branches and bark are often discarded as forestry residues and waste wood, used as additives in composite materials or burned for energy production. More advanced uses of bark include the extraction of chemical substances for glues, food additives or healthcare, as well as the transformation to advanced carbon materials. Here, we argue that a proper understanding of the internal fibrous structure and the resulting mechanical behaviour of these forest residues allows for the design of materials with greatly varying properties and applications. We show that simple and cheap treatments can give tree bark a leather-like appearance that can be used for the construction of shelters and even the fabrication of woven textiles. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Bio-derived and bioinspired sustainable advanced materials for emerging technologies (part 1)’.

Structure, Function, and Application of Self‐Healing Adhesives from Mistletoe Viscin

“…All NMR data were acquired at 70 °C on a Bruker Avance III spectrometer ( 1 H, 600.06 MHz) equipped with a cryoprobe using standard pulse sequences. 1 H spectra, as well as 2D COSY, NOESY, TOCSY, HMBC, and HSQC spectra were all performed, with experimental details reported in the Supporting Information. The spectra were processed and analyzed with MestreNova (version 14.0.1-23559).…”

“…As cellulose is the most widely abundant polymer in the natural world, plant-derived and plant-inspired materials aid researchers as blueprints for the design of green materials in wide-ranging fields with an overarching goal of minimizing human dependence on petroleum-based polymers. [1][2][3][4][5] In the realm of adhesives, crude oil-derivatives such as polyurethane (PU) and polyvinyl acetate (PVA) are widely used, especially as wood glues. [6,7] Though efforts are expanding to produce these adhesives from alternative source materials, [8] nature provides numerous relevant model systems which use environmentally benign building blocks to achieve excellent adhesion properties including well-studied systems such as gecko toe pads and the mussel byssus.…”

Trends in the development of methods of disposal of bark and bark-wood waste of long-term storage (review)

“…По объемам заготовки Российская Федерация занимает пятое место в мире. Поскольку современные технологии лесозаготовок концентрируются на заготовке стволов как на самой ценной части древесины, то в местах лесозаготовок остаются многочисленные порубочные отходы в виде вершинок, веток, остатков стволов и коры [1]. В результате интенсивной заготовки древесины в ХХ веке мировые запасы лесов значительно снизились.…”

“…Одним из мало использующихся до настоящего времени отходов лесной и деревообрабатывающей промышленности является кора, причем как кора свежезаготовленной древесины, так и кородревесные отходы длительного хранения [1].…”

Bioderived and bioinspired sustainable materials

“…The next two review papers offer perspectives on the vast opportunities wood can offer to manufacture bioinspired sustainable advanced materials. Such opportunities are discussed in a first review by Eder (Biomaterials Department, Max-Plank Institute for Colloids and Interfaces) and coworkers in an opinion piece entitled 'Advanced materials design based on waste wood and bark' [5] as well as in another review by Chanana and co-workers (Institute for Building Materials, Wood materials Science, ETH Zurich) entitled 'Sustainability in wood science and technology' [6]. Sustainability assessment using life cycle assessment (LCA) [7] is key when wanting to quantify the environmental impacts associated with the production of such bioderived and bioinspired materials.…”