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InventWood is about to mass-produce wood that’s stronger than steel

It sounds like the stuff of science fiction, but it actually comes from a lab in Maryland.

In 2018, Liangbing Hu, a materials scientist at the University of Maryland, devised a way to turn ordinary wood into a material stronger than steel. It seemed like yet another headline-grabbing discovery that wouldn’t make it out of the lab.

“All these people came to him,” said Alex Lau, CEO of InventWood, “He’s like, OK, this is amazing, but I’m a university professor. I don’t know quite what to do about it.”

Rather than give up, Hu spent the next few years refining the technology, reducing the time it took to make the material from more than a week to a few hours. Soon, it was ready to commercialize, and he licensed the technology to InventWood.

Now, the startup’s first batches of Superwood will be produced starting this summer.

InventWood to Provide Intectural with Steel-Strength SuperWood in New Deal

“Right now, coming out of this first-of-a-kind commercial plant — so it’s a smaller plant — we’re focused on skin applications,” Lau said. “Eventually we want to get to the bones of the building. Ninety percent of the carbon impact from buildings is concrete and steel in the construction of the building.”

To build the factory, InventWood has raised $15 million in the first close of a Series A round. The round was led by the Grantham Foundation with participation from Baruch Future Ventures, Builders Vision, and Muus Climate Partners, the company exclusively told TechCrunch. 

InventWood’s Superwood product starts with regular timber, which is mostly composed of two compounds, cellulose and lignin. The goal is to strengthen the cellulose already present in the wood. “The cellulose nanocrystal is actually stronger than a carbon fiber,” Lau said. 

The company treats it with “food industry” chemicals to modify the molecular structure of the wood, he said, and then compresses the result to increase the hydrogen bonds between cellulose molecules. 

“We might densify the material by 4x and you might think, ‘Oh, it’ll be four times strong, because it has four times the fiber.’ But it’s actually more like 10 times stronger because of all these extra bonds that get created,” Lau said.

The result is a material that has 50% more tensile strength than steel with a strength-to-weight ratio that’s 10 times better, the company said. It’s also Class A fire rated, or highly resistant to flame, and resistant to rot and pests. With some polymer impregnated, it can be stabilized for outdoor use like siding, decking, or roofing. InventWood’s first products will be facade materials for commercial and high-end residential buildings, Lau said.

Compressing the material also concentrates the colors. “You end up with something that looks like these richer, tropical hardwoods,” he added.

Ultimately, InventWood is planning to use wood chips to create structural beams of any dimension that won’t need finishing. “Imagine your I-beams look like this,” Lau said, holding up a sample of Superwood. “They’re beautiful, like walnut, ipe. These are the natural colors. We haven’t stained any of this.”

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Posted

Interesting.  Most wood has about 10% the density of steel, so if they compress it 4X they're up to ~ 40% or so.  A strength-to-weight ratio 10X that of steel (what alloy?  steel strength varies wildly) implies 4X the strength of steel (10X = 4X/0.4X).

And the big question . . . cost.

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Posted (edited)

While living in Puerto Rico during the early 1950s my Dad acquired some beams of Ausubo wood that were salvaged from a renovation of a 17th Century Spanish colonial building on our US Army post (Fort Brooke). 
That wood supposedly has a Janka hardness of 3130 lbs.
He had several table lamps (two single & one double) and some small items made from it, and I inherited this one single lamp…..(of course I attached the stained glass shade):

The side table is Taiwanese teak, custom made when we lived there in the late 1950s.

 

IMG_5558.jpeg

Edited by Armybrat
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Posted
2 minutes ago, UT_OB1 said:

They compress the wood to make hydrogen bonds?….  L O fucking L. 

They inject some chemicals and a polymer. They aren't idiots. 

Posted

Sounds like a great product if the price falls in-line with ipe. I doubt it will be used in general residential framing because of price and because soft woods are easier to cut, frame and nail.

Posted
11 minutes ago, Bevo said:

Sounds like a great product if the price falls in-line with ipe. I doubt it will be used in general residential framing because of price and because soft woods are easier to cut, frame and nail.

If you need to cut it, you just show it a picture of Sarah Huckabee for a few minutes.

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Posted
1 hour ago, immamac said:

They inject some chemicals and a polymer. They aren't idiots. 

 

59 minutes ago, immamac said:

https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/environment/a16758876/chemical-treated-super-wood-steel/

This is from 2018, it seems like in earnest they have continued development and commercialization and it isn't just some nonsense. 


i wonder the environmental impact of this product, the OP article mentions using food grade materials, so I wonder what those polymers are? I also get that polymers imply plastic, but aren’t limited to plastic. 

Posted
1 hour ago, Bevo said:

Sounds like a great product if the price falls in-line with ipe. I doubt it will be used in general residential framing because of price and because soft woods are easier to cut, frame and nail.

Yeah I don't think anyone would suggest using it to replace normal framing material, that's not a good use case.  But it could be used to replace steel beams or even the current version of laminated wood beams, if the price is in line or cheaper.

Posted
3 hours ago, Parliament said:

Aggy gonna build sky scrapers from it.

Now when the bonfire collapses in a pile, it can just stay there as a permanent monument for 100 years. Advantage Aggy. 

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