A graduate student from Hebrew University of Jerusalem has found out a method to convert wastes from paper mills into environment friendly industrial foam. Shaul Lapidot, a Ph.D., student under Prof. Oded Shoseyov, and his lab friends at the Rehovot-located Hebrew University have developed a method to generate nano-crystalline cellulose (NCC) from paper mill wastes.
The produced cellulose is further treated to form composite foams as a bio-based substitute for the presently utilized synthetic foams in the composite materials industry.
Shaul Lapidot, Ph.D. student in agriculture at the Hebrew Universeity of Jerusalem
In the paper production process the fibers that are lesser in size than the paper forming fabric mesh are not used and are allowed to run off as waste, thus resulting in around 50% of fibers going as sludge waste. It is estimated that Europe alone generates around 11 million tons of such paper waste every year.
Lapidot has identified the small dimensioned fibers of paper mill wastes as an ideal resource for developing NCC due to their inherent small size. The small sized materials required lower level of energy and chemicals in the conversion process to NCC. Further he has formulated the usage of NCC into nano-structured foams. The developed nano-structured foams are further treated to form composite foams for their usage in composite materials industry to substitute the synthetic foams.
The developed light weight and highly porous NCC foams were further strengthened by utilizing hemicellulose-based furan resin developed from crop wastes such as rice hulls, corn cobs, oat hulls and wastes of sugar cane processing. The developed NCC reinforced foams match the technical performance of latest synthetic foams perfectly.
Melodea, an Israeli-Swedish start-up has licensed the commercial process from Yissum, the technological transfer arm of the Hebrew University for large scale manufacture.