Sustainability in Wood Products: A New Perspective for Handling Natural Diversity

Abstract

Wood is a renewable resource with excellent qualities and the potential to become a key element of a future bioeconomy. The increasing environmental awareness and drive to achieve sustainability is leading to a resurgence of research on wood materials. Nevertheless, the global climate changes and associated consequences will soon challenge the wood-value chains in several regions (e.g., central Europe). To cope with these challenges, it is necessary to rethink the current practice of wood sourcing and transformation. The goal of this review is to address the intrinsic natural diversity of wood, from its origin to its technological consequences for the present and future manufacturing of wood products. So far, industrial processes have been optimized to repress the variability of wood properties, enabling more efficient processing and production of reliable products. However, the need to preserve biodiversity and the impact of climate change on forests call for new wood processing techniques and green chemistry protocols for wood modification as enabling factors necessary for managing a more diverse wood provision in the future. This article discusses the past developments that have resulted in the current wood value chains and provides a perspective about how natural variability could be turned into an asset for making truly sustainable wood products. After briefly introducing the chemical and structural complexity of wood, the methods conventionally adopted for industrial homogenization and modification of wood are discussed in relation to their evolution toward increased sustainability. Finally, a perspective is given on technological potentials of machine learning techniques and of novel functional wood materials. Here the main message is that through a combination of sustainable forestry, adherence to green chemistry principles and adapted processes based on machine learning, the wood industry could not only overcome current challenges but also thrive in the near future despite the awaiting challenges.

Wood Derived Flexible and Spongy Architectures for Advanced Electrochemical Energy Storage and Conversion

“…[37,38] Lignin is composed of three different cinnamyl alcohol monomers: p-coumaryl alcohol, coniferyl alcohol, and sinapyl alcohol (Figure 2b). [39] Grass usually has all three monomers, while softwood lignin (from coniferous trees) has mostly coniferyl alcohol, and hardwood lignin (from deciduous trees) has both coniferyl and sinapyl alcohol. [40] Both polysaccharides (cellulose and hemicellulose) and lignin have numerous hydroxyl groups, allowing for chemical changes and making wood a desirable raw material for the production of sophisticated carbon composites in electrochemical energy storage and conversion applications.…”

3D Printed Cellulose Nanofiber Aerogel Scaffold with Hierarchical Porous Structures for Fast Solar‐Driven Atmospheric Water Harvesting

“…[39][40][41] Cellulose nanofiber (CNF), a type of hydrophilic, biodegradable, and sustainable nanomaterial, has been widely explored to design 3D printing ink due to its gel-like rheological property in water and strong structural integrity after drying. [42][43][44][45][46][47] In our previous work, we have demonstrated a superelastic and ionic conducting 3D printed CNF scaffold by combining with calcium chloride, [48] and the elastic structure can be readily tailored by the amount of moisture absorbed from air, manifesting the feasibility to trap hygroscopic salt in the 3D printed CNF scaffold for water sorption. However, building 3D printed CNF structure for sorption-based AWH has not been reported so far and is worthy of further exploration.…”

Multiscale Engineered Waste Wood Particles toward a Sustainable, Scalable, and High‐Performance Structural Material

“…[11,12] Wood is an abundant, lightweight, and environmentally friendly structural material. [13][14][15] Using wood-related products to replace steels, concrete, and plastics which have high carbon emissions might be a feasible approach to help stave off global warming. [16][17][18] However, commonly used wood with a porous structure shows flexural strength <110 MPa and tensile strength <150 MPa, far from the high-performance requirements associated with buildings, vehicles, and aircraft.…”