Natural replacement for Styrofoam developed

A wood based alternative to Styrofoam has been created by a team of Swedish designers and researchers.

Although at first the material has been used to create a bicycle helmet, its creators say it could also have uses for flame retardant materials, water filtration and antibacterial material.

Professor Lars Wågberg, from Stockholm’s KTH Royal Institute of Technology, said: “There are wood helmets out there, but what is unique here is this is made totally out of forest products — nothing else. The outer layer is veneer, the straps are made from extra strong paper, and then the foam is made from cellulose fibres.”

Called Cellufoam, the material consists of wood cellulose nanofibers (fibrils) which are modified with a foaming agent, water and air. The resulting particles stabilise the air bubbles through Pickering stabilisation – a process where mixtures can be stabilised by small particles instead of emulsifiers. By using a process like this, along with different surface treatments and combinations of components, the team hope the material will be suitable for flame retardant materials, water filtration and antibacterial material.

The aim of this concept was to show the possibility of using wood cellulose as a suitable alternative to Styrofoam and other foams made from synthetic polymers. Professor Wågberg said the wood based foam material has comparable properties to Styrofoam. “Even better, it is from a totally renewable resource — something that we can produce from the forest,” he added. In a country such as Sweden, where more trees are planted then harvested, this is a big plus.

The material was developed in conjunction with Lennart Bergström, professor in Material Chemistry at Stockholm University, and Nicholas Tchang Cervin, a former PhD student at KTH, in the Wallenberg Wood Science Centre.

It is hoped that the material can be marketed on a cost effective scale “in the not too distant future”.