Canada’s forests are a key source of renewable materials, from paper to lumber. Yet many of the industry’s most common products, such as cardboard and newsprint, are on the low end of the value chain.
Canada’s forests are a key source of renewable materials, from paper to lumber. Yet many of the industry’s most common products, such as cardboard and newsprint, are on the low end of the value chain.
It’s a shortcoming the University of Toronto’s Ning Yan aims to rectify.
“The analogy we use is to a petroleum refinery, where the crude oil feedstock is made into thousands of different products, from lower-value fuels to higher-value commodity chemicals,” says Yan, a professor in the department of chemical engineering and applied chemistry in the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering. “We can do the same with our renewable resources, such as forest biomass.”
Yan is the director of the newly formed Low Carbon Renewable Materials Centre (LCRMC) at U of T Engineering, which is supported by the dean’s strategic fund. LCRMC researchers work closely with forestry companies and industry associations to transform forest biomass – including materials that today are discarded as waste – into commercially valuable products.
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Image via Tyler Irving.
