14 DAY TRIAL // The news came as a huge surprise even to environmentalists – a product that not only eliminates the need for oil-based plastics, but also does not require the cutting of a ridiculous amount of trees yearly. Liquid wood now exists, and can be molded and shaped just like plastics, with just a fraction of the costs. The technology belongs to Tecnaro, a German spin-off company, which already produced intricate figurines to prove the viability of its processes.
The main component in liquid wood is lignin, an abundant byproduct of the paper industry. When regular wood reaches the paper processing factories, it's divided into lignin, cellulose and hemicellulose. Because the lignin makes the paper look a bit brownish, it's used only for low-grade paper, but usually it's discarded, as the industry has no use for it.
The German researchers managed to devise a way to make the substance malleable, via the use of fibers, wax and high pressure. When subjected to intense pressure, the new compound behaves exactly like plastic, so machines can inject it into nozzles, and then into molds, which means that everything that can be made from plastic can be made of the new material.
Its developers say that the substance can be given a range of applications. Even water bottles can be made up of the stuff. But the researchers say that the “new plastic” could be obtained even easier than it is now, by simply using a process involving nothing more than water, high temperatures and high pressure. This will make the whole process eco-friendly, which will reduce the carbon footprint of the liquid wood.
“Old-school” woodwork can also yield intricate figurines, but the inventors of liquid wood say that the processes associated with this can be very cumbersome, in that it cannot be done by machines, and it requires a lot of man-hour of labor. But by simply creating an intricate mold and blowing the liquid wood in, all these downsides of working with wood disappear.