New Research By Indian Scientists: Transparent Wood Is Expected To Replace Plastic Soon

A new study by Indian scientists shows that transparent wood is expected to replace glass or plastic for automobile windshields, transparent packaging and biomedical equipment. Transparent wood is renewable and biodegradable, which can reduce the ecological impact on the environment. In addition, its cost-effectiveness is five times that of glass, so it can significantly reduce energy costs. The study was published in the Journal of general environmental science.

According to the data of the United Nations Environment Programme, about 400 million tons of plastic waste is produced every year in the world, and the number of disposable plastics discarded is increasing. In view of this, transparent wood is becoming one of the most promising alternative materials in the future.

Transparent wood was originally made by German scientist ziegfeiffenker in 1992 and later improved by other researchers. Transparent wood is made by removing lignin from wood and replacing it with transparent plastic material. Lignin is a natural biopolymer supporting plant tissue. Unlike plastics, it is biodegradable and non-toxic.

"Plastic has been used as a substitute for fragile glass, but our latest research shows that transparent wood is a better alternative. Transparent wood can replace environmentally harmful petroleum based plastics such as polypropylene, polyvinyl chloride, acrylic acid, polyethylene," said prodiut Dahl, an assistant professor at the school of biochemical engineering at the Indian Institute of technology

The results show that the use of sodium chlorite to remove lignin from wood and to produce transparent wood with epoxy resin infiltration has less impact on the environment than the widely used method of using methacrylate polymer.

According to anish chatos, a researcher at the Institute of wood science and technology in Bangalore, India, transparent wood has attracted extensive attention due to its good physical, mechanical and optical properties. "Transparent wood is mainly developed from laminated wood, which has good strength like ordinary wood, but is light in weight. By adding special materials to give it a variety of advanced properties, it becomes a unique bio based substrate, which can be used in many fields such as construction, energy storage, flexible electronics and packaging," he said