carbon fiber tagged posts

When cars, planes, ships or computers are built from a material that functions as both a battery and a load-bearing structure, the weight and energy consumption are radically reduced...

A waste material from the paper and pulp industry soon could be made into anything from tennis rackets to cars, according to new findings by Texas A&M AgriLife Research scientists.
Credit: Graphic courtesy of Texas A&M AgriLife Research

Scientists have discovered how to make high quality carbon fiber from lignin. About 50 million tons of lignin – or structural part of a plant – piles up each year as waste from the US paper and pulping industry. Additional lignin could come from biorefineries that use plants to produce ethanol, yielding another 100 million to 200 million tons of lignin waste each year. Yet only about 2% of the lignin waste is currently recycled into new products. “Lignin is considered as one of the most abundant biopolymers in the world,” he said...

1. Iowa State engineers don’t need a plow to clear snow from the heated test slabs they installed at the Des Moines International Airport. Larger photo. Photos courtesy of Halil Ceylan.
2. A thermal image of the heated airport pavements.

Engineers have installed 2 test slabs of electrically conductive concrete and the pavement has effectively cleared ice and snow. Iowa State University’s Halil Ceylan picked up his smartphone, opened up an app and called up the remote controls for the first full-scale test slabs. When a winter storm approaches, Ceylan can use that app to turn on the heated pavement system and, thanks to real-time video capability, watch as snow and ice melts away.

Late last fall Prof...

This model car’s carbon fibre roof and battery electrodes are made with wood. Credit: Image courtesy of KTH The Royal Institute of Technology

Swedish researchers have produced the world’s first model car with a roof and battery made from wood-based carbon fibre – a lightweight and renewable alternative to metals and other composites. Remember wood paneled station wagons? Well, wood is back, but this time it’s not for aesthetics – it’s for reducing vehicle weight with renewable materials. Swedish researchers have just produced the world’s first model car with a roof and battery made from wood-based carbon fibre.

Although it’s built on the scale of a toy, the prototype vehicle represents a giant step towards realizing a vision of new lightweight materials from the forest, one of the benefits...