New Super Wood is Weeks Away from Full Production

Stronger than steel, InventWood is looking to take low-value wood chips and turn them into Super Wood structural beams that match tropical hardwoods like ipe and walnut for colour.

Researchers are nearing full production of a groundbreaking material known as “Super Wood,” which boasts strength surpassing steel. This innovative wood product presents a promising alternative to using tropical hardwoods, potentially mitigating the risk of deforestation in vulnerable forest ecosystems.

80,000 Hours

That’s a remarkable amount of work hours for a single machine, the Norcar 600 owned by Erkki Rinne is taken well care of, it even has the original Diesel engine.
Kieran Anders Forestry

Kieran Anders is a forestry contractor working in the lake district. His work involves hand cutting and extracting timber using a skidder and tractor-trailer forwarder.
Promoting safety in the workplace

It is not possible to eliminate chain shot, but there are simple steps that can be taken to reduce the risk.
Glasfryn Fencing and Sawmill

Arwel takes great pride in the fact that the mill has no waste whatsoever, “the peelings are used for children’s playgrounds, gardens and for farm animals in barns in the winter and the sawdust has multiple uses in gardens and farms as well.
Keeping Timber Hauliers Safe

Timber hauliers need to encourage young blood in, and also look after the hauliers we have, we need make the sector a safe and positive place to work.

FIND US ON

It comes as the first batch of timber—twelve times stronger and ten times tougher than natural wood—is set to come off the conveyor belt in a matter of weeks.

“Right now, coming out of this first-of-a-kind commercial plant — so it’s a smaller plant — we’re focused on skin applications,” according to Alex Lau, CEO of InventWood – the company which is commercialised and licensed the technology from Liangbing Hu, a materials scientist at the University of Maryland “Currently, we are focusing on skin applications from this unique, smaller commercial plant,” said Alex Lau, CEO of InventWood. The company has commercialised and licensed the technology from Liangbing Hu, a materials scientist at the University of Maryland, who discovered that you could create stronger and denser wood by pressing the wood fibres together.

“Eventually, we want to get to the bones of the building. 90% of the carbon impact in buildings is from concrete and steel in the construction of the building.”

InventWood raised $15 million to build the factory in the first close of a Series A round led by the Grantham Foundation with participation from Baruch Future Ventures, Builders VC, and Muus Climate Partners, according to Lau”who provided exclusive insights to TechCrunch.”InventWood has secured $15 million in the initial closing of its Series A funding round. This round was led by the Grantham Foundation, with additional participation from Baruch Future Ventures, Builders VC, and Muus Climate Partners, according to Lau, who shared exclusive insights with TechCrunch.InventWood has secured $15 million in the initial closing of its Series A funding round. This round was led by the Grantham Foundation, with additional participation from Baruch Future Ventures, Builders VC, and Muus Climate Partners, according to Lau, who shared exclusive insights with TechCrunch.

According to Lau, Super Wood starts with regular timber, which is mainly composed of two compounds—cellulose and lignin—with the goal of strengthening the cellulose already present in the wood: “The cellulose nanocrystal is actually stronger than carbon fibre.”

InventWood then treats it with “food industry” chemicals to modify the wood’s molecular structure. The wood is then compressed to increase the hydrogen bonds between the cellulose molecules: “We might densify the material by 4x, and you might think, oh, it’ll be four times strong. But it’s actually more than ten times stronger because of all the extra bonds that get created.”

InventWood has commercialised technology that has been refined by researchers at the University of Maryland – who have crunched the time to produce Super Wood from more than a week to a matter of hours.

The result is a building material that has at least 50% more tensile strength and a strength-to-weight ratio 10 times better than steel. It’s also Class A fire-rated and resistant to fire, rot, and pests, and with the help of polymer impregnation, it can be used in outdoor applications like decking and roofing. And compressing the fibres also concentrates the colours: “(So) you end up with something that looks a lot like those richer tropical hardwoods.”

Ultimately, the goal is to convert low-grade wood chips into structural beams of all dimensions that don’t need finishing. “Imagine you L-beams that look like this,” he said. They’re beautiful, like walnut and ipe—these are the natural colours; we haven’t stained any of this.”