Waste wood chemically recycled to produce material stronger than steel

Alex Wilkins

A material made from recycled wood is five times stronger than natural wood and can be made from any timber by-product.

Millions of tonnes of wood go into landfill each year. To build a truly circular economy, wood needs to be re-used on a grander scale.

A group of people at the University of British Columbia, Canada, have invented a process that can expose the tiny fibres found in the plant cell wall. The solvent used in the method is dimethylacetamide.

The researchers call it a healed piece of wood when two pieces of wood are brought together. The mechanical properties of this wood are better than it used to be. It is more resistant to breaking than other metals.

The mechanical strength of the material is greater than the strength of the original material.

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Wood treated this way can be re-used to create new objects, and the treatment process can be repeated on the same pieces of wood to extend their working lifetimes.

Steve Eichhorn at the University of Bristol, UK, says that this is a really elegant way to heal wood, using a common cellulose solvent, recovering and enhancing the mechanical properties of nature.

All of the techniques used in the process are well-established, but no one examined how much their method would cost if scaled up to an industrial level.

There is a journal reference to Nature Sustainability.