8 ms·
This seems to be the original research paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/nature25476 https://www.nature.com/articles/nature25476 [edit: whoops, it's the sa
by enopod_ 1y ago
This seems to be the original research paper:
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature25476 https://www.nature.com/articles/nature25476
[edit: whoops, it's the same paper]
"First, natural wood blocks were immersed in a boiling aqueous solution of mixed 2.5 M NaOH and 0.4 M Na2SO3 for 7 h, followed by immersion in boiling deionized water several times to remove the chemicals. Next, the wood blocks were pressed at 100 °C under a pressure of about 5 MPa for about 1 day to obtain the densified wood"
Pretty simple and straightforward.
- IgorPartola 1y agoSo what size will a 2x4 be after that? 0.75x1.25 just doesn’t roll off the tongue, does it? In seriousness, nominal vs actual sizing is just terrible. Do places outside of North America do this too?
- dopidopHN 1y ago[flagged]
- supermatt 1y ago> I never saw a house made a wood beside a ski chalet before Maybe you need to get out more? In France (where I assume you live) new public buildings are mandated to be at least 50% wood or other bio-based renewables. Also ~5% (and increasing) of new domestic builds are timber framed.
- lukan 1y agoIs stone not a bio based renewable? (Concrete isn't, but plain old stone? Or bricks?)
- soulofmischief 1y agoWhere are we growing new stones?
- lukan 1y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortar_(masonry) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortar_(masonry) You can recycle them. And raw stones are not a rare thing and they do get formed new constantly inside the earth.
- soulofmischief 1y agoI also took physical science courses in middle school. Just because new stones are formed within the earth's crust at some marginal rate does not mean that they are considered a renewable resource.
- lukan 1y agoHave you every watched a vulcano spit out lava? I wouldn't call that marginal. And vulcanoes are just the visible part of that process happening everywhere in the crust.
- soulofmischief 1y agoWe're talking about stone in general. Volcanic stone is one type of stone, which does not cover all of the applications of stone as used in buildings, masonry and other industries today. I also specifically addressed volcanic stones in a sister comment. Some rate of formation is not enough to satisfy the commonly held definition of renewable resources. Google "is stone a renewable resource" for a jumping off point.
- danielheath 1y ago... where the mantle meets the crust?
- wsintra2022 1y agoIceland architects trying it out next to volcanoes, funnel the molten stuff into building material mounds of some kind
- zdragnar 1y agoStone is just minerals. There's no organic (bio) component in stone at all. Likewise, there's nothing renewable about stone. Our primary source is digging it out of the ground.
- sidewndr46 1y agoIsn't that just a matter of perspective? Most of the stone where I live is made of limestone which is from dead organisms. To the point that you can just break it open and find fossils throughout it. That isn't renewable in the timeframe of humanity, but in the age of the universe it's renewable.
- lukan 1y agoGood point, there are bio stones, but they are not renewable by our reference. But the vulcano stones are. And we have really lots of other stone underneath. No shortage of them. I would count them renewable.
- generic92034 1y agoIf you are counting that as renewable then crude oil could be seen as renewable, too. ;)
- sidewndr46 1y agoActually no. The situation that allowed that to happen, won't happen again in our biosphere. There are now microbes that break down decaying plant matter very quickly. So you won't ever get substantial amounts of oil being formed in the earth's crust.
- bee_rider 1y agoI think this is sort of a more interesting question than the responses you got made it out to be. Yes, of course, stone doesn’t really grow back on the timescales that we care about. Yes, stone not “bio” in any sense really. But the goal of the law is not to make biology or geology points. It is to reduce the embodied carbon of new construction. I guess the determination was made that stone has some carbon cost… maybe it comes from the mining? Or maybe they are trying to kickstart, specifically, a new industry in the field of growable construction material. Maybe they figure stone mining is already well developed tech anyway.
- dopidopHN 1y agoCinder blocks. That what you are missing here. Lots of house in France are made of that. Not “rocks” and that is a co2 intensive process to produce concrete. See : Lafarge
- blagie 1y agoWhy? That seems dumb. We have concrete buildings going back to Greek and Roman times, mostly standing. Wooden buildings have a very finite lifespan, and, aside from earthquakes, much less so in a disaster. A wooden city and a steel/brick/concrete city react very differently to firebombing. Especially with declining populations, it makes sense to build structures to last. The old school brick/concrete/stone/... European buildings from 1500 are largely in good shape, at least where they weren't demolished by war. Traditional European construction is also much more friendly for heating / cooling. The thermal capacity of stone-based materials helps a lot. To me, it feels a bit like Germany banning nuclear power plants, and switching to Russian fossil fuels instead...
- supermatt 1y agoWhat do you mean by "Traditional European construction"? In much of central and northern Europe almost all construction is traditionally wood.
- quetzthecoatl 1y ago>In much of central and northern Europe almost all construction is traditionally wood. That is woke bs and you know it. If it ain't 100% roman concrete, it ain't right.
- supermatt 1y agoIm not sure what you mean by "woke bs" as it is evidentially factual. Most of central and northern Europe wasn't even a part of the roman empire...
- quetzthecoatl 1y agoI was joking.
- supermatt 1y agothat went way over my head :D
- dopidopHN 1y agoI live in NeW Orleans. Where 90% of the housing stock is made of wood. So the 5% French figures in 2025 confirm my impression. Most stuff are not made of wood in France. Maybe it’s a language thing : when I say « made of wood » I mean that no stone are involved. There is no percentage. The whole frame is 2 by 4 from Home Depot.
- skrebbel 1y agoHere in NL stone is the traditional building material too, so it's not uncommon to see houses built of wood, but covered in a thin layer of "wallpaper" ("gevelbekleding") that's made of thin sides of real stone bricks. This way the houses look like regular brick houses, but are actually mostly made of wood. The brick-wallpaper means you don't need to paint all the time like in traditional wooden houses (eg in the Nordics), extra bonus. Personally I think it's a bit weird to build a house and fake the building material, but my only point is, you might have seen a lot more wooden houses than you knew!
- sleepyguy 1y agoAre you sure the facade isn't just stone, or do you use stone in interior walls? Most houses in NA are built of wood with a brick or stone facade. Some houses have a facade siding that can be anything from wood to cement board. Typically, the interior of the house is framed with wood or, in some cases, steel (mostly commercial). The facade of a house or structure is usually tied into the framing so it doesn't fall over. Hence, brick ties are used to secure it to the wood or steel framing.
- croisillon 1y agothey use wood to build houses in the mountains because they already used all the stones to build the mountain
- barbazoo 1y agoBC, most residential building up to a couple stories high are made with mostly lumber I would say.
- imglorp 1y agoIt's true that dimensions are all screwy, evidently due to variable shrinkage during drying in the old days. The mills control for it now, but meanwhile everyone got used to the weird sizes and we're stuck with them because everyone centered on the shrunk sizes for tooling and standards. Pros know but it's a pain for DIYers. https://www.inchcalculator.com/actual-size-of-dimensional-lumber/ https://www.inchcalculator.com/actual-size-of-dimensional-lu...
- lesuorac 1y ago> It's true that dimensions are all screwy, evidently due to variable shrinkage during drying in the old days. That's just an old wives tale. Lumber shrinks for money reasons, older lumber is bigger [1] with sequential revisions to the standard decreasing it's real size [2] [3] (the difference between 2in and 15/8in in strength is minimal however you can keep doing that math, and they did, to go down from 2in to 1.5in over a century). [1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinteresting/comments/vv9atu/the_difference_in_2x4_lumber_from_1946_and_2022/ https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinteresting/comments/vv9atu/t... [2]: https://ntrl.ntis.gov/NTRL/dashboard/searchResults/titleDetail/PB2006102557.xhtml https://ntrl.ntis.gov/NTRL/dashboard/searchResults/titleDeta... [3]: https://www.synthmind.com/miscpub_6409.pdf https://www.synthmind.com/miscpub_6409.pdf
- bluGill 1y agoLumber shrinks, but not that much. There was NO standard and so mills just did what felt they could get away with calling a 2x4. Some mills did 2x4 was 2"x4", some did other sizes, it depending on how much they felt they could cheat vs how much they felt advertising the larger size would help. I have seen houses built in 1880 that used modern dimensions for 2x4s.
- PaulDavisThe1st 1y agoThis person claims otherwise: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WaJFudED5FQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WaJFudED5FQ They claim that the change was driven by railroad shipping charges, and wasn't based on drying, but on pre-planing the rough lumber to reduce shipping cost. They further claim that in 1919 the US Dept. of Agriculture studied the issue and ended up defining a national standard for what the post-planed dimensions of a 2x4 should be. And they further claim that it took until the early 1960s to settle on a new standard that matches what we use today.
- IrishTechie 1y agoDefinitely done in Ireland and the UK anyway.
- not_a_bot_4sho 1y ago> In seriousness, nominal vs actual sizing is just terrible. Do places outside of North America do this too? I understand the origins of this. But I've never understood why we haven't moved on to actual sizing given the scale at which standardized lumber dimensions are produced
- bluGill 1y agoI'm just glad there is a standard. It doesn't matter much what size it is. What matters is that I can go to any lumber yard/mill when I need more and get it. What matters is that I and my inspector can look at (or more likely memorize!) some charts and be sure that everything is strong enough. Is actually 2"x4" lumber stronger than the standard sizes - yes, but most of the time it doesn't matter, and if it does I really want to step up to 2x6 (or something) because margin of safety is important when you get that close)
- scythe 1y agoThe real question for practical purposes is how much of these fine chemicals are actually consumed during the process and how much can be reused. The foul-smelling Kraft process has held on to its title in paper production because the chemicals it uses can be recycled within the plant itself. There are many better, less polluting ways to make paper, but they consume an impractical amount of chemicals which drives the price way out of economic usability. This process will need to regenerate almost all of that sodium hydroxide and sodium sulfite, or it's just peracetic paper again.
- koverstreet 1y agoI'd rather live next to a leaky paper plant than a teflon plant any day.
- echelon 1y agoI'd rather live next to neither. Paper plants stink.
- itsbenweeks 1y agoI wouldn't. The numerous miscarriages that my grandmother had while living in a mill town, and the cancer diagnoses that followed family who worked at the mill taught me to stay upstream of mill towns.
- gertop 1y agoI think it's clear that you're not familiar with how often paper mills have poisoned the nearby populations.
- zoklet-enjoyer 1y agoVisit Int'l Falls, MN. They have a paper mill and then there's another one on the other side of the river in Canada. It's foul
- Loughla 1y agoAbsolutely not. Paper mills are fucking nightmares.
- 0x1ceb00da 1y agoSo I guess boiling and pressing will get rid of the trapped air inside wood and it won't work very well as an insulator?
- nemomarx 1y agoYou probably only use this wood for the frame, or spread through the rest of the wooden structures like rebar?
- gadflyinyoureye 1y agoWood used in framing has a small r value because of the air. The timber on the exterior prevents all the energy transfer. The loss of r value can be off set with two 2x4 frames. As strong as a 2x6 wall and about the same price. Added benefit is air gaps.
- heywoods 1y agoSounds like a great candidate for decking.
- HWR_14 1y agoProbably not. But it eliminates a lot of what makes wood flammable. I wonder how it impacts the effects of humidity and time to make wood warp.
- seniortaco 1y agoWood is already a poor insulator, so if it takes up less space and you can fit more insulation, that is better.
- dlubarov 1y agoYes, but if it's a much worse insulator, the extra heat transfer through studs might be more significant? I'm not sure if it's been measured, but I imagine this densified wood would probably have at least twice the thermal conductivity of typical construction lumber, since naturally dense hardwoods already approach that. So it seems like we'd basically need to replace 2x studs with 1x studs, assuming the same stud spacing, in order to match the thermal performance of a traditional wall. I don't think this would be a dealbreaker at all though, one could always use continuous insulation instead of cavity insulation, which has a lot of benefits anyway. Maybe it can end up being a competitor to metal studs for commercial builds, at least.
- accrual 1y agoI wonder if this can help offset the weakness of new growth wood - trees and wood specifically designed for fast growth and quick turn around. https://brenthull.com/article/old-growth-wood https://brenthull.com/article/old-growth-wood
- the_sleaze_ 1y agoMy thoughts as well. I was holding a board the other day and it just seemed, forgive me, aerosol-ized. Like those Aero chocolates that are essentially full of bubbles. "This new wood doesn't feel like wood used to" and shook my fist at the passing cloud. I have high hopes for this product as a leg of sustainability.
- m463 1y agoI wonder if it would work for bamboo.
- ksec 1y agoMy first thought as well. Considering they are the fastest growing plants. We cant stop the world from using steel or be carbon sensitive on things. But as soon as economics incentives kicks in we could decarbonise faster than most could imagine. I really hope timber technology improves to the point like solar where we would plant forest the size of a state.
- 725686 1y agoThe problem that I see is that, if the thickness is so drastically reduced as in the video posted somewhere above, you will need (much, much) thicker wood to start with.
- turtlebits 1y agoNew growth wood is sustainable and is perfectly fine in construction, if you need strength, you can buy LSL/LVLs.
- aaron695 1y ago[dead]
- metalman 1y agoThere is a great deal of prior art in aviation and automotive engineering for densified wood, which have all proven to be non competitive with metal. Lighter, stronger, but not quickly adaptable to new designs or refinements.....the molds are large, complex, heavy, and expensive. And a simple no go for beams is that they(wood) burns and steel does not, will instantly remove them(wood) from bieng used in most building codes past a certain hight, where minimum times for evacuation durring a fire can not be met.
- foota 1y agoI was under the impression that mass timber buildings were actually safer for fires because it takes a very long time to burn through, and unlike steel they won't lose their strength in an intense fire.
- metalman 1y agowhat maters is time to escape befor "total involvement", or confaguration, steel contributes nothing to a fire, fire cant climb or follow it, and it acts as a heat sink, vs wood, which is fuel. All of the historical mass casualty fire storms, involved wooden structure, and steel, concrete,glass, and brick, ended that. Add in modern fire suppresion and fighting equipment and the current situation is quite secure vs/vs fire. edit, another factor is comunication and road infrastructure, where the recent fire storm in California, destroyed many many wooden structures, but the loss of life was exceptionaly low compared to other firestorms in less developed countrys. woods great, love the stuff, have a lot of wood, live in a wooden house and heat with wood, but there is essentialy no way that can be done with a thousand people in a huge building, so steel, which I also love and work with. Everything in it's place.
- bluGill 1y ago"total involvement", or confaguration, is what matters true. However fires are more complex than that. Generally the wood frame isn't a source of fuel for the fire until later. The carpet and other furniture that is the same in all builds is likely to burn first. Not long after the wood frame is burning the steel frame absorbs enough heat to fail - but either way you really want to be out long before it gets that bad (and probably are dead if you are not)
- hatsunearu 1y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CglNRNrMFGM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CglNRNrMFGM Here's a NileRed video replicating the process.
- clayhacks 1y agoOk that was super cool to see. I can see how clearly the process described in the paper has plenty of room for improvement