The cutting down of trees to make paper, furniture and other materials has to end. A land without trees is a land prone to natural disasters, in fact there are several civilizations that disappeared by cutting down all the trees near them (it is believed that this was what happened to Easter Island).
The fact is that in April 2022 an article was published in Materials Today magazine that talked about a way to grow wood in a laboratory, the first 3D printed wood in the world.
That’s right, it is possible to make wood in a laboratory in certain ways. One is through the synthetic wood manufacturing process, which involves creating materials that have the same properties as natural wood but are made from synthetic chemicals rather than from trees. Another way is through tissue engineering, in which wood cells are grown in a laboratory and then assembled into three-dimensional structures that resemble natural wood.
In both cases, the objective is to create a sustainable alternative to natural wood, which is a finite resource and whose massive use can have negative environmental impacts. Synthetic wood and lab-grown wood can be stronger and more durable than natural wood and can be used in a wide variety of applications, including furniture making, construction, and paper product manufacturing.
News in 3D printing of wood
Now there is news on the subject, since they have created customizable wood in their laboratory from the cells of a flowering plant known as Zinnia elegans The technique allowed them to bioprint pieces of wood of any shape and size, so it is possible to print directly a table from the cells of said plant.
To achieve this, they first treat the zinnia cells with a liquid medium and then with a gel solution containing hormones and nutrients. By changing the concentration of these hormones, the researchers were able to control the stiffness, strength, density, and various other physical and mechanical properties of lab-grown plant matter.
Ashley Beckwith is the lead author of the paper, who founded a company called FORAY bioscience to further develop new techniques and methods to grow wood without cutting down trees. So far this is just a first look at a cellular agriculture approach for the generation of plant material, but it is an extremely important first step.
Beckwith and his team now plan to 3D print wood in a laboratory from cells of trees such as pine trees. If they can do that, the cutting down of trees to make cabinets will be over.
