Exactly one month ago today, a new team member joined the Centre for Wood Science and Technology at Edinburgh Napier University. Welcome our new Research Assistant, Marlene Cramer!
Marlene has a background in Wood technology with a degree in Process Engineering and Natural Materials Technology from TU Dresden in Germany. She is a young member of the research community and only graduated earlier this year. Nonetheless she already gathered some experience: Two internships at universities in Vietnam and New Zealand and undergraduate jobs at two German research institutes prepared her well for the new challenges of this job. In the next two years, she will join Daniel Ridley-Ellis, Robert Hairstans, Francesco Pomponi and other researchers from six countries across Europe in the InFutUReWood project.
The project
The title “InFutUReWood” is derived from “Innovative Design for the Future – Use and Reuse of Wood (Building) Components”. As mentioned on the blog earlier, the project revolves around the question “How should we build today to be able to circulate tomorrow?” and focuses on timber in construction. The researchers are working on various problems to facilitate the circular use of timber as a small step towards a circular economy. Diverse challenges are part of the project:
How can we design for deconstruction of buildings rather than demolition?
Which new products can we make from recovered timber?
How can we use the timber from demolition sites today and how can we improve the possibilities for reuse in the future?
Are these techniques more sustainable and economically feasible?
How can we change the current standards in timber construction to a circular approach?
For more details visit the website of the project.
How are we involved?
The Team at Edinburgh Napier University, including Dan, Robert, Francesco and Marlene, is mostly concerned with the grading of recovered timber. At the moment it is not easy to assess the properties of timber that is reclaimed from demolition sites. In fact, is it not even easy to assess the properties of new timber. Current grading methods rely heavily on the background information of the wood, like origin and species (as well as a bit of chance). For recovered timber none of this information is available, which is why new grading methods need to be developed. You don’t think that can be very hard? Read in our previous blog posts what challenges the grading of timber holds and how we try to overcome them:
Thinking beyond strength classes
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