Can bamboo be used to build houses and highways? What high-tech is hidden in bamboo steel technology?

Do you believe that bamboo can be used instead of steel as a building material?

On November 7, 2022, at the Second World Bamboo and Rattan Conference held in Beijing, "bamboo steel" entered people's vision. It has been through many battles and has extraordinary skills. It not only appeared in the Beijing Winter Olympics buildings, but also appeared in key projects such as the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge. Bamboo steel has proved with key projects that "bamboo" can replace steel in construction, promoting the effective implementation of the "dual carbon" strategy. So, is bamboo steel bamboo or steel? Why is the small "bamboo" as hard as steel? What high-tech is hidden in the bamboo steel process?

Bamboo steel is neither the common steel nor the combination of bamboo and steel in a simple sense. Bamboo steel is a new type of recombinant material. It is made of bamboo as the main material and resin as the auxiliary material. The combination of the two has both bamboo components and steel-like strength. Its "specific strength" is 5 times that of ordinary carbon structural steel. Bamboo steel does not crack after a 28-hour water boiling and drying cycle. During the 10-year aging cycle exposed to the tropical natural environment, the thickness change rate remains within 2%, and its dimensional stability is better than that of mahogany. It reaches the strong corrosion resistance level I, can resist termite erosion, and has a service life of more than 20 years. Bamboo steel material does not release formaldehyde, meets the requirements of green product standards, and the thermal insulation effect is 10 times that of concrete. This research result has found an answer for the efficient use of bamboo in China, and at the same time explored a new path for the green and low-carbon development of forestry.

China is the country with the richest bamboo resources and the largest bamboo industry in the world. The emergence of bamboo steel can better achieve the "dual carbon" goals. There are 837 species of bamboo plants in 39 genera in my country, accounting for 51% of the world's bamboo species. At present, my country has developed bamboo steel products using 22 bamboo species, including moso bamboo, philodendron, white oleophytum, longevity bamboo, bamboo, light bamboo, praecox, green bamboo, and red shell bamboo as raw materials. In 2021, the output value of China's bamboo industry was close to 381.8 billion yuan, and the total import and export trade of bamboo products was 2.2 billion US dollars, accounting for more than 60% of the world's total trade in bamboo products. It is expected that the output value will exceed 1 trillion yuan by 2035, accounting for about 10% of the forestry industry. By the end of 2022, China's existing bamboo forest area is 129 million mu, and the total output value of the bamboo industry has reached 415.3 billion yuan.

Data picture: Bamboos growing in the Hundred Mile Bamboo Sea in Liangping, Chongqing

China is rich in bamboo resources, which can guarantee the market supply and demand of bamboo steel. Bamboo steel can be used not only in our daily life, such as outdoor floor plank road paving, urban landscape architecture, interior decoration, doors, windows and furniture products, but also in many fields such as highway traffic guardrails, urban landscape traffic guardrails, wind turbine blades, etc.

According to statistics, Zhugang was selected twice in 2016 and 2017 as one of the 100 key forestry scientific and technological achievements for promotion. It was also selected in the National "12th Five-Year Plan" Major Science and Technology Innovation Achievements Exhibition and one of the first five key promotion achievements of the National Forestry and Grassland Administration. It has won seven national and provincial and ministerial awards.

Bamboo steel has also been included in the National Development and Reform Commission's key energy-saving and low-carbon technology promotion catalog. At the same time, bamboo steel is listed as an important solution for achieving carbon reduction and carbon fixation in the "Green Technology Promotion Catalog", playing an important role in achieving the "dual carbon" goal.

Review expert: Yang Rurong, associate researcher at the Institute of Geography and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences

China Association for Science and Technology Department of Science Popularization

Xinhuanet

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