Building boom is a big market for new materials

Building boom is a big market for new materials

A carbon-fibre car, being lightweight, will get more mileage out of its battery than a heavier steel one. It might even prove stronger in crash tests.
Another surprisingly strong material could be used in made from what people throw out. Arthur Huang, the co-founder of Miniwiz Sustainable Energy Development, based in Taiwan, trained as an architect in America. He is making building materials from re-engineered rubbish. One product, Polli-Brick, is a block resembling a square bottle made from recycled PET plastic, which is widely used to make food and drink containers. Because of their shape, Polli-Bricks can lock together without any adhesive to form structures such as walls. These, says Mr Huang, are strong enough to withstand a hurricane, but greatly reduce the carbon footprint of a building and are about a quarter of the price of traditional building materials. Moreover, as they are translucent they can have LED lighting incorporated in them.
Another of Mr Huang’s materials is a natural bonding agent extracted from discarded rice husks. This can also be added to help set concrete. The idea is not exactly new; as Mr Huang points out, something similar was added to the mortar used to build the Great Wall of China. He thinks mainland China with its building boom could once again be a big market for this product. A similar material can be extracted from the barley husks left over from brewing. Mr Huang’s vision is for the system to be used in local communities to turn rubbish into useful products.
Increasingly, product engineering will begin at the nanoscale. Nanotechnology is already used to enhance some products. Titanium dioxide, for instance, is used to produce self-cleaning glass in buildings. A film of it only a few nanometres thick is thin enough to be seen through yet powerful enough to react with sunlight to break down organic dirt. The material is also hydrophilic, attracting rain as a sheet of water that washes off the residue. Pilkington, a British company, was the first to launch self-cleaning glass using this technology in 2001.
Increasingly, product engineering will begin at the nanoscale. Nanotechnology is already used to enhance some products
A trawl through the research laboratories at MIT provides many more examples of future products that might use nanoparticles. Among the things Kripa Varanasi and his colleagues are looking at are materials that are extremely water-repellent. These can be used to make superhydrophobic coatings that would greatly improve the efficiency and durability of machines like steam turbines and desalination plants, says Mr Varanasi.