patents.google.com/patent/WO2017136714A1/en
Requires low/high pressure for degassing and impregnating the wood after the lignin is removed though.
(, Mon 8 Feb 2021, 23:03, Reply)
I guessed that the impregnation would be the difficult bit. I suspect it will need to be a very low viscosity resin as well. Every time I tried using vacuum pumps at work for de-gassing experiments I'd get shouted at for putting dodgy gases through the pump which could affect the oil and bugger up subsequent experiments.
(, Tue 9 Feb 2021, 10:54, Reply)
Using Kraft paper pulp it would be easier to mould/bleach as well as impregnate.
Not terribly 'green' given the chemicals and energy required and not recyclable in most cases.
(, Tue 9 Feb 2021, 14:31, Reply)
I swear some days it feels like we're one small step away from becoming the Vorlons.
(, Mon 8 Feb 2021, 22:29, Reply)
step 1: remove most of the wood
step 2 replace the 90% of structural material that you've dissolved with a marine epoxy that goes transparent in UV
step 3: put it in the sun
congratulations, you now have a transparent piece of epoxy. In the future you may even make windows out of it if people ever start preferring plastic windows
(, Tue 9 Feb 2021, 0:47, Reply)
But are the "most" and "90%" based on actual data? The properties of a cellular structure impregnated with resin could be very different to just resin.
(, Tue 9 Feb 2021, 11:06, Reply)
if you got a corpse, let the maggots eat all the flesh and put the skeleton in a chemical bleach it until was all degraded, then covered that skeleton with epoxy, would you say "hey, we've made a transparent human"? I suspect they're using the term because it sounds more green than what it is
you can add a lot of thing to epoxy to change its properties, no doubt. Fiberglass springs to mind. I'm sure a lattice of degraded cellulose has some effect. But they compared its thermal properties to glass. Id like to see how it performs against similar epoxy polymer sheets to see if it's worth the fuss
(, Tue 9 Feb 2021, 21:42, Reply)
1: Painting 1mm strips of wood with h2o2 is not 'removing most of the wood' or dissolving it. Painting wood with h2o2 is an additive process.
2: Painting white stained wood with marine epoxy is not replacing dissolved structure, it's filling in natural depressions that you find in wood.
3: The wood, h2o2 and marine epoxy combine, you delightfully confident man.
(, Tue 9 Feb 2021, 14:47, Reply)
it depolymerises the lignin, breaking down the long plant polymers and releasing oxygen and a bunch of short chain ketones that would evaporate, which is why they stand them up and hopefully don't breathe the fumes.
(edit) just had a look at the lab data ((https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4360/11/5/776/pdf). The hydrogen peroxide actually removes a fair bit of the cellulose and hemicellulose along with the lignin. It states lignin removal is "from 29% of weight down to 2.9%". You'd apologise for your unwarranted superciliousness if you had the least bit of class about you, brb. pretty much everything you stated is wrong
(, Tue 9 Feb 2021, 20:57, Reply)
"replace the 90% of structural material that you've dissolved"
how much of the wood is removed?
(, Wed 10 Feb 2021, 9:33, Reply)
i feel like Ive defended my comic reply enough to would-be pedants. Sometimes I wonder what some are doing on a comedy website
(, Wed 10 Feb 2021, 10:23, Reply)
is your whole account one long troll dedicated to dimwitted argument? I'd say well played sir, for such a sustained performance
(, Wed 10 Feb 2021, 20:50, Reply)
It's made from wood and you can see through it.
(, Wed 10 Feb 2021, 15:11, Reply)
Old technology doesn't get much grant money though.
(, Thu 11 Feb 2021, 2:18, Reply)