
Why wood pulp is world's new wonder material   - wmeredith
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21528786.100-why-wood-pulp-is-worlds-new-wonder-material.html
======
tokenadult
This brief article about current uses of wood pulp reminded me of something I
read in a book back in the 1970s about a proposal to build an aircraft carrier
during World War II (when there was a shortage of steel) out of a mixture of
wood pulp and water ice. That material was called "pykrete," after the name of
its inventor, Geoffrey Pyke. The shortage of steel was alleviated, and plenty
of aircraft carriers constructed of conventional steel, before this idea was
implemented. In actual use, such a ship would have had to have been
continuously refrigerated, perhaps a greater drain on scarce materials than
building a ship out of steel.

Sure enough, there is a Wikipedia article about the material,

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pykrete>

which reports that the Discovery Channel popular science program Mythbusters
made ship models to test out the idea.

Wikipedia

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Habakkuk>

and the Royal Naval Museum

<http://www.royalnavalmuseum.org/info_sheets_Habbakkuk.htm>

have websites about the frozen aircraft carrier project that relate more
details, citing sources other than the book I read decades ago.

AFTER EDIT: I think the book I read about this plan was Of Spies and
Strategems by Stanley Lovell,

[http://www.amazon.com/Spies-Stratagems-Stanley-
Lovell/dp/B00...](http://www.amazon.com/Spies-Stratagems-Stanley-
Lovell/dp/B000I5KCJ6/)

although a Google Books search doesn't show the keyword I'm looking for in
that book.

~~~
sp332
I can't find footage, but Mythbusters had a pretty impressive episode where
they tested various formulations of pykrete. Jamie's newspaper-based one
seemed to be the strongest. A smallish piece of it held a pile of lead, plus
Adam's entire weight, while he smacked it with a hammer repeatedly. They built
a little boat out of it which disintegrated pretty quickly. The idea that you
could build an aircraft carrier was deemed "plausible but ludicrous".
<http://mythbustersresults.com/alaska-special-2>

~~~
baddox
I would consider "plausible" and "ludicrous" to be mutually exclusive.

~~~
jerf
There are many things that are possible, but never the optimum solution to any
real engineering problem. Mythbusters has a long track record with that sort
of thing, probably most notably their functional lead balloon.

------
mistercow
>it is made from a tightly packed array of needle-like crystals which have a
strength-to-weight ratio that is eight times better than stainless steel.

That's a pretty useless thing to say. What kind of strength? Tensile? Shear?
Yield?

Maybe this figure is buried somewhere in the paper they linked to, but not in
any easy to find place.

~~~
soperj
Looks like they're probably talking about Tensile strength.
(<http://www.celluforce.com/en/product_properties.php>)

~~~
tocomment
Does that put us in space elevator territory?

~~~
soperj
According to this(<http://www.spaceelevatorblog.com/?p=1125>), no not yet.

------
lifeisstillgood
tl;dr: US Forestry Service: We have too many trees ! How can we sell more of
them in a declining building market?

The US Forestry service (certainly by Bill Bryson) is regarded as in thrall
with loggers (builds roads for access to heavy equipment, sells trees at a
loss acting as a subsidy provider etc.)

So the idea that the great new industry, that involves chopping down trees,
should be owned by US forestry service, does not inspire confidence.

    
    
       The $1.7 million factory, which is owned by the US 
       Forest Service, 
    

Who remembers the Friends episode where Courtney-Cox was asked to come up with
some tasty way to make cakes with fish-chocolate?

~~~
nl
_The US Forestry service (certainly by Bill Bryson) is regarded as in thrall
with loggers (builds roads for access to heavy equipment, sells trees at a
loss acting as a subsidy provider etc.)_

You seem surprised by this? The clue is the name: _Forestry_ service - it
exists to provide service to the forestry industry.

BUT this isn't necessarily a bad thing! A properly managed forestry industry
is a good thing: it provides a cheap, 100% renewable resource, acts as a
carbon sink, and acts as a substitute for non-replenishable resources (eg,
unmanaged rainforest logging).

At the same time, there is a tension between the renewable aspects of forestry
management and the idea of opening new areas for exploitation. That's where
the issues are, not around building forestry roads etc.

~~~
maxerickson
It's actually called the US Forest Service.

~~~
lifeisstillgood
There is needless pedantry on HN and there is needful pedantry on HN

thank you, have a karma point :-) you deserve two for that

------
adminonymous
There's nothing that suggests this material has to be derived from _wood_
pulp, or from trees. There are plenty of other organisms that produce the type
of cellulose they're working with. As mentioned elsewhere, it could be more
efficient plants such as bamboo, or even sugarcane grasses, or hemp, for that
matter.

------
DanielBMarkham
NSF says $600 billion industry by 2020? Wow, I'd really like to see the
details of how that projection was made.

~~~
ImprovedSilence
This would be a good place to start: <http://xkcd.com/605/>

------
adastra
Just read PG's submarine essay for the first time a couple weeks ago [1], and
have been on the lookout for a good example since then.

Bingo.

[1] <http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html>

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pkulak
How long until people are buying $5000 bikes made of this stuff?

~~~
soperj
I get that you're having a dig at the biking crowd, but the major cost of a
$5000 bike is the components, not the carbon fiber frame. If the sheer
strength is better than Carbon fiber, and still has the same strength to
weight ratio, then it probably won't be too long.. especially if the cost is
lower.

------
ggwicz
Sad that hemp is overlooked, it's truly a wonder material. So much so that it
sounds fake.

<http://www.informationdistillery.com/hemp.htm>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor_Wears_No_Clothes>

~~~
ozborn
It isn't overlooked, follow the link to the technical report.

[http://www.tappi.org/Hide/Events/2012-Nanotechnology-
Confere...](http://www.tappi.org/Hide/Events/2012-Nanotechnology-
Conference/Papers/12NANO05.aspx)

~~~
ggwicz
It can't still be illegal here in the United States if it wasn't overlooked;
ask the average person if non-psychoactive marijuana was used to make cars at
one point and most will look at you with confusion, if they even answer.

The history and incredible, incredible use of hemp is extremely overlooked in
general. Good luck finding it mentioned more than in passing in a high school
text book, or finding a politician aware of the fact that it's almost
incomprehensibly better for paper, clothing, and could create - oh my god -
_so_ many jobs, the thing a lot of politicians seem to be talking about and
promising; but directly preventing (this is both parties, by the way).

------
bitwize
Great, another reason to chop trees down.

~~~
saalweachter
A wood farming industry could be great for the environment, if done right. As
long as you don't burn it, wood is a carbon sink, and as long as you keep
replanting trees as you cut them down, you aren't really deforesting.

Basically, assuming this is produced sustainably, for every tonne of this
magic wood pulp we produce we suck about 2/3rds of a tonne of CO2 out of the
atmosphere. Win-win!

~~~
vidarh
> and as long as you keep replanting trees as you cut them down, you aren't
> really deforesting.

That may be so, but there are plenty of ways of cutting them down that still
leaves the environment devastated. Poorly managed logging utterly ruins the
eco-system of the forests.

You're right it _can_ be good for the environment by creating additional
economic incentives to manage forests, but only as long as they're managed
_well_ , and that's not at all a given.

------
cerebrum
Is this material dangerous? What if you breathe it in?

