(327c) Multi-Scale Engineered Approach to Advance Forest Product Utilization for Sustainability

Abstract: Over the past half-century, the significant growth in the world's population has continued to pose far-reaching problems and challenges worldwide. This demographic and economic expansion has led to a significant increase in demand for basic necessities such as shelter, fuel, paper, packaging, and a wide range of both durable and non-durable goods. As a result, there is an urgent need to utilize sustainable resources to meet these demands. For thousands of years, forests have served as critical sources of raw materials for paper, construction materials, tools, and other products. Today’s demand underscores the importance of revitalizing forests as a renewable resource to achieve sustainability goals. Therefore, utilizing forests for raw materials to advance the use of forest products represents a promising avenue with substantial potential to bridge the needs arising from population growth and societal development. This multi-scale engineering approach seeks to innovate across multiple scales of forest product utilization from molecular-level engineering of functional materials such as graphene, thermal insulation aerogel, functional films, and absorbents to the large-scale integration of sustainable forestry practices such as lightweight wood fiber composites, carbon foam composites, and wood structure. By leveraging advances in materials science, chemical engineering, and sustainable design principles, this approach aims to develop new, environmentally-friendly, multifunctional materials and products derived from forest resources. The structure-property relationship has been considered under the application requirements in design to maximize the economy and sustainability. These innovations are intended to reduce waste, increase recycling and reuse, and minimize the environmental footprint of forest products.