DailyDirt: More Miraculous Manmade Materials
from the urls-we-dug-up dept
There’s no shortage of new man-made materials being developed, and they come in all different shapes, sizes and purposes. Sometimes it’s about making something old in a new way, or giving something common an extremely uncommon property — or just producing something in previously unimaginable quantities. Here are some new developments from the world of synthetics.
- Concrete is a significant but often-overlooked source of greenhouse gas emissions, but what if you could replace it with a new material made from those very emissions themselves? Researches have found a way to turn captured carbon dioxide into a new construction material they’ve dubbed CO2NCRETE, though it’s currently only at the proof-of-concept stage. [url]
- Transparent wood has been created at the microscopic level, but now researchers are demonstrating a new form that could be mass-produced. Wood has endured as one of the most reliable and useful building materials, and a transparent version could be an ideal material for solar cells, among other things. [url]
- Bolt Threads is a startup that just raised $50 million in funding to “brew” spider silk and other insect fibres in huge quantities. Spider silk is an incredible material limited primarily by the fact that it is extremely difficult and expensive to farm, but these new methods could completely change that within the next few years (and change the face of the global textile market in the process). [url]
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Filed Under: carbon dioxide, co2, concrete, greenhouse gas, material science, materials, spider silk, textiles, transparent wood
Companies: bolt threads
Comments on “DailyDirt: More Miraculous Manmade Materials”
Spider silk is harder to just “brew” because the process of fiber spinning that a spider does is done at a scale that is just insanely impractical to do with any kind of tech we currently have. Good luck with that. Maybe they can get silkworms to spit out a form of spider silk.
Re: Re:
I recommend you watch the Rice University video on producing Carbon Nanofiber threads and then go on to look into their partner Teijin Aramid:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XDJC64tDR0
In the video you can see the fiber spinning cylinder used.
Created spider silk is much closer to mass production than you thought.
> transparent version could be an ideal material for solar cells, among other things.
If it is transparent, it is not capturing energy from light (in the frequencies for which it is transparent). Maybe they’re talking about heat-capture? That is, a direct replacement for glass/plastic coverings in existing solar cells?
And from the linked article…
>Berglund says transparent wood panels can also be used for windows, and semitransparent facades, when the idea is to let light in but maintain privacy.
… sort of like bamboo paper partitions, or greased paper windows… The article doesn’t say how much more cost effective this transparent wood would be over using glass. For now, I’d say it’s a novelty but I’m not yet sold on its utility.
Re: Re:
When they say transparent wood is ideal for solar panels, they mean as a cover. Glass is fragile and expensive, and unbreakable glass way more expensive. Transparent wood would not be fragile while still remaining cheap.
CO2NCRETE
I can’t think of a non-problematic way to pronounce it.
Re: CO2NCRETE
I think it’s probably best pronounced as something like “see-oh-tune-crete”, only with a bit more separation between the “tu” and the “n”.
Re: Re: CO2NCRETE
COt woN CRETE
Now say it faster as one word.