What’s Happening in Plant-Based Composites?
- Ned Patton
- Mar 26
- 7 min read
I have written about biocomposites, plant based resins, and plant based fibers before, but I haven’t been around to this topic for a couple of months, so I thought it might be a good idea to catch up on where all of the efforts that were just science projects a year ago have gotten recently.
The lead picture in this post is from Penn State University’s Architecture Department. It is the result of a project where the researchers were looking to build an architectural structure using all plant-based materials that was also biodegradable and completely sustainable. What you see is the framework that they knitted out of natural fibers upon which they are going to grow a mycelium rich fungus – yes, mushroom stuff. This pic is from 2021 when they got the framework knitted together and ready to accept the fungus that they were going to grow on it. I took a look at where they are presently, and they have actually gotten some fungus to grow. This structure won the Skidmore Owings & Merrill (SOM) Foundation Research Prize in 2021 and has been growing fungus mycelia to this day. The pic below is a close up of what part of it looked like last November.
If you look fairly closely at this, there is very little space between the knitted knots in the reinforcement structure, so the fungus mycelia have completely filled in this section. And the wonderful thing about all of this is that this is not only biodegradable and entirely sustainable, the fungus just keeps growing as long as there is CO2 and a little water vapor in the air where the structure is standing. That means that this structure will only get stronger over time, and it is also self-healing. I wonder if it can grow mushrooms.
On the natural fiber front, in an October 28 article from last year in Composites World, it appears that Greenboats GmbH, a German company that got its start in 2013 building wood and fiberglass boats has gotten almost completely moved over to flax fiber in their boat construction. And, they have also branched out into making higher volume parts like natural fiber, plant based resins, plant based structural foam and balsa wood sandwich panels for things like camper shells and room dividers. They have a camper they launched at JEC World in 2024 they call the Sherpa.
The camper shell on this thing is made using flax fiber / plant resin sandwich panels. And they market this thing as fully recyclable. What Greenboats is working toward is to offer to their customers that they will buy the shell back after it has reached the end of its life, recycle it into new products, and sell those new shells back into the same market. This is a fully circular business model and since it is plant based it is fully sustainable. This thing looks like you could have a lot of fun with it.
Even big aerospace is getting on board with sustainable, plant based, and recyclable composites. In a recent announcement from Airbus (June 2024) they describe an ongoing program to develop plant-based carbon fibers and even carbon fibers from captured CO2. They are working on the development of a renewable source of acrylonitrile, both from waste biomass and from direct air capture. Their direct air capture uses renewable energy to capture CO2 from the atmosphere, mix it with water and other gases from the air, and produce hydrocarbons that are then sustainably converted into acrylonitrile. They have even demonstrated this in a non-structural panel on one of their helicopters, their H145 PioneerLab helicopter.
The bio-derived carbon fiber panel was successfully flight tested in May of last year (2024) and demonstrated its airworthiness. If you look carefully at this helicopter you will see a black panel with bolts holding it on in the bottom center of the nose of this aircraft. That’s the test panel that flew last May.
What this demonstrated is that it is possible and even feasible to use bio-derived or non-petroleum derived acrylonitrile in a safety critical application. What is missing is the industrial infrastructure to manufacture this stuff at a scale that makes it a competitive alternative to petroleum-based acrylonitrile.
What this will take, and I have said this several times in this newsletter, is the political will to pass laws and regulations that provide a monetary incentive for the companies that make and use carbon fiber composites to actually make the investments required to scale this technology up to where it can out-compete traditional carbon fiber. Once that happens and the two types of acrylonitrile are on an even footing, the bio-based or non-petroleum derived acrylonitrile will become the standard and will also become the standard precursors for all acrylic plastics as well as a whole host of other hydrocarbon based materials. It is only a matter of time before plant-based and non-petroleum based organic materials become the norm for the precursors for all of our composite structural materials.
I’ve got one final example that I found both fun and interesting. In Japan they have a very highly prized paper that is called “washi” paper. The Japanese people have been writing and drawing and painting on this paper for centuries. It is, however, beginning to fall out of favor as more of the Japanese people adopt more western style building materials for their houses and less of the traditional Japanese materials.
To counter this trend, a group of researchers at Tohoko University in the province of Miyagi has developed a new, more biodegradable and tougher paper more amenable to western style building materials by layering and hot pressing together layers of washi with a biodegradable plastic called polybutylene succinate or PBS. The resulting paper has significantly enhanced structural properties while maintaining the natural beauty and classic look of washi paper. In fact, in structural tests, the new material withstood about 60% more stress than traditional washi paper.
What makes this new washi based material strong is the fact that the washi paper itself has lots of little spaces between the fibers that get filled with the PBS, thereby creating a natural, biodegradable, plant-based composite material. The PBS sticks rather well to the washi fibers which enhance their strength and provide additional stiffness to the new material.
One more thing that the Japanese researchers found is that when they exposed the resultant material to a compost-like biodegradation medium, the composite degraded much faster than the pure PBS did, so landfilling or composting this material at the end of its use will allow the material to biodegrade quickly and become dirt and nutrients to grow more plants. A win-win situation and a totally circular and sustainable building material.
I wanted to close this discussion with something that I came across in my meanderings through the web looking for plant-based composite material news. There is a study that has been published by SpecialChem (https://polymer-additives.specialchem.com/news/industry-news/global-bio-based-composite-market-hit-usd-9-bn-000235835) that was conducted by Boston based BCC Research states that the global bio-based composites market will hit $9B (yes, that’s billion dollars) by 2029, while growing at a 7.4% CAGR. This is an incredible growth rate that demonstrates that the demand for these materials is extremely high. And the fact that BCC found that the market would be that large means that the supply side of this is starting to catch up to the demand side. That is incredibly good news for the industry, and it demonstrates that the bio-composite sector of the industry will keep up with some of the faster growing sectors like the advanced composites industry. In fact, the bio-composites business may be a big part of the overall growth of the advanced composites sector of the industry. It appears that bio-composites will be at least 10% or so of that part of the industry by the end of this decade.
That’s about it for this week. As always, I hope everyone that reads these posts enjoys them as much as I enjoy writing them. I will post this first on my website – www.nedpatton.com – as then on LinkedIn. And if anyone wants to provide comments to this, I welcome them with open arms. Comments, criticisms, etc. are all quite welcome. I really do want to engage in a conversation with all of you about composites because we can learn so much from each other as long as we share our own perspectives.
My second book is now completely in the hands of my publisher. They have even given me quite a bit of homework to do while they get it set up in their marketing, editing, and production departments. Most of you know that it is about what I have been writing in these newsletters for the last 6 months or so – sustainability of composites and a path to the future that does not include using fossil fuels for either the raw materials or the process energy to make composites. The title of the book, at least for now, is “Close the Circle, A Roadmap to Composite Materials Sustainability.” It truly is a roadmap which I hope that at least at some level the industry will follow. Only time will tell.
Finally, I still need to plug my first book, so here’s the plug. The book pretty much covers the watershed in composites, starting with a brief history of composites, then introducing the Periodic Table and why Carbon is such an important and interesting element. The book was published and made available last August and is available both on Amazon and from McFarland Books – my publisher. However, the best place to get one is to go to my website and buy one. I will send you a signed copy for the same price you would get charged on Amazon for an unsigned one, except that I have to charge for shipping. Anyway, here’s the link to get your signed copy: https://www.nedpatton.com/product-page/the-string-and-glue-of-our-world-signed-copy. And as usual, here’s a picture of the book.
Comments