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Why wood pulp is world's new wonder materialUpdated11:23 24 August 2012 byWill FergusonMagazine issue 2878. Subscribe and saveFor similar stories, visit theNanotechnologyTopic Guide THE hottest new material in town is light, strong and conducts electricity. What's more, it's been around a long, long time. Nanocrystalline cellulose (NCC), which is produced by processing wood pulp, is being hailed as the latest wonder material. Japan-based Pioneer Electronics is applying it to the next generation of flexible electronic displays. IBM is using it to create components for computers. Even the US army is getting in on the act, using it to make lightweight body armour and ballistic glass. To ramp up production, the US opened its first NCC factory in Madison, Wisconsin, on 26 July, marking the rise of what the US National Science Foundation predicts will become a $600 billion industry by 2020. So why all the fuss? Well, not only is NCC transparent but 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. Even better, it's incredibly cheap. "It is the natural, renewable version of a carbon nanotube at a fraction of the price," says Jeff Youngblood of Purdue University's NanoForestry Institute in West Lafayette, Indiana. The $1.7 million factory, which is owned by the US Forest Service, will produce two types of NCC: crystals and fibrils. Production of NCC starts with "purified" wood, which has had compounds such as lignin and hemicellulose removed. It is then milled into a pulp and hydrolysed in acid to remove impurities before being separated and concentrated as crystals into a thick paste that can be applied to surfaces as a laminate or processed into strands, forming nanofibrils. These are hard, dense and tough, and can be forced into different shapes and sizes. When freeze-dried, the material is lightweight, absorbent and good at insulating. "The beauty of this material is that it is so abundant we don't have to make it," says Youngblood. "We don't even have to use entire trees; nanocellulose is only 200 nanometres long. If we wanted we could use twigs and branches or even sawdust. We are turning waste into gold." The US facility is the second pilot production plant for cellulose-based nanomaterials in the world. The much larger CelluForce facility opened in Montreal, Canada, in November 2011 and is now producing a tonne of NCC a day. Theodore Wegner, assistant director of the US factory, says it will be producing NCC on a large scale. It will be sold at just several dollars a kilogram within a couple of years. He says it has taken this long to unlock the potential of NCC because the technology to explore its properties, such as electron scanning microscopes, only emerged in the last decade or so. NCC will replace metal and plastic car parts and could make nonorganic plastics obsolete in the not-too-distant future, says Phil Jones, director of new ventures and disruptive technologies at the French mineral processing company IMERYS. "Anyone who makes a car or a plastic bag will want to get in on this," he says. In addition, the human body can deal with cellulose safely, says Jones, so NCC is less dangerous to process than inorganic composites. "The worst thing that could happen is a paper cut," he says. When this article was first posted, Jeff Youngblood was incorrectly quoted as saying that nanocellulose is 2 nanometres long. It also incorrectly stated that NCC material has eight times the tensile strength of stainless steel – this has now been corrected.
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Space Elevator!Sun Aug 19 01:16:12 BST 2012 by ullrich fischerWhen can we start building space elevators out of this stuff?
login and replyreport this commentSpace Elevator!Sun Aug 19 07:44:57 BST 2012 by Eric KvaalenAccording to (long URL - click here) the tensile strength is 214 MPa, and we can assume a density of about 1 kg/L. That means that if you hang a strand of nanocrystalline cellulose longer than about 21 km from some fixed point, it will break. So it's not nearly good enough for a space elevator, for which that length needs to be on the order of 40 000 km!
login and replyreport this commentSpace Elevator!Mon Aug 27 05:00:39 BST 2012 by MikeSo that could be a strand in the of rope of the elevator?
login and replyreport this commentSpace Elevator!Mon Aug 27 06:57:39 BST 2012 by Eric KvaalenWhat you could do is to have a strand going from ground level to 10 km high. There it would attach to two strands which would go up to 20 km high. There those would attach to 4 strands going up to an altitude of 30 km, then 8 strands to altitude 40 km, 16 to 50, 32 to 60, and so on.
That way, there is hope that none of the strands would break, because each one would support approximately the weight of 20 km of itself, at its top.
But as you can see, the rope doubles in thickness every 10 km, which means getting 1000 times thicker every 100 km or so, or 1 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 times thicker every 1000 km.
See why I say it's not nearly good enough?
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view thread8 Times The Strength Of Stainless SteelMon Aug 20 02:22:57 BST 2012 by prealiI looked at the various links cited within the document and don't see any facts supporting the claims of such strength. Further it appears that NCC is very susceptible to moisture which would make it a poor replacement for strong material like steel. I tried to find other people making such claims and could not substantiate the validity of your article.
login and replyreport this comment8 Times The Strength Of Stainless SteelMon Aug 20 09:47:59 BST 2012 by Eric KvaalenThe 2008 NS article I linked to above gives the tensile strength as only 214 MPa, and gives that of structural steel as 250 MPa.
login and replyreport this comment8 Times The Strength Of Stainless SteelFri Aug 24 12:39:40 BST 2012 by Rick BurlowI bet it burns too. That would limit its potential as a building material for cars and the like.
However, you could sandwich it into a composite material, using the material's tensile strength inside a waterproof or flame-retardant coating.
Sounds like it would be a good material for rapid prototyping too.
I heard on the BBC a guy say that it chars at about 300°C. (That would happen even if it were protected from flame or air.) So he said you can't use it for car engines for example.
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view thread8 Times The Strength Of Stainless SteelThu Aug 23 12:53:42 BST 2012 by lamorpaNew Shimmer is a floor wax or a dessert topping!
login and replyreport this commentview threadReferences PleaseTue Aug 21 02:29:05 BST 2012 by Alan Vallishttp://www.alanvallis.wordpress.com/
This could be a total game-changer if it holds water (or not) but after searching for confirmation of the speculation herein I have to suspect that NS is inflating the story a little. Like the equally impressive Negative Carbon Liquid Fuels, there seems to be more hope than substance so far
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