Principals
David Seber -has been an entrepreneur in the building products field for his entire
professional life. He represented the ceramic tile industries of
Japan, Korea, and Brazil in the U.S. market, and is familiar with all
major aspects of international trade. Dave established and successfully
ran a redwood lumber yard in southern Oregon, and has been associated with
the lumber industry since 1981. He has been directly involved in
the development of agricultural fiber utilization in composites for the
last fifteen years.
Fibre Alternatives Mission & Scope
Mission
The mission of Fibre Alternatives is to use hemp and other natural fibers in industrial applications that both stimulate the economies of the industries/products that the materials are developed for, and positively affect the environment and global warming.
Scope
The main areas and applications of interest to Fibre Alternatives are:
- Raw Materials Supply- the development of a reliable and usable large scale supply of hemp biomass and/or fibre for industries based on high volume/low margin production products comprising suitable seed varieties, harvesting methods and delivery techniques is the initial requisite for supplying the companies and industries in the scope of applications Fibre Alternatives intends to develop. Current ag/harvesting techniques employed in developed countries where hemp is grown are aimed at extracting the bast fiber through a multi step process that makes hemp one of the most expensive natural fibers on the market. Fibre alternatives advocates planting dense stands with little or no side branching, leaves/flowers to be harvested green in chopped pieces ¼”-3/4” that are immediately usable in the range of applications to be developed at a cost competitive or superior to other ag produced biomass or wood waste. The ability to provide raw these materials to manufacturers as an interface between them and the farmers/growers would be a major income source of income for the company
- Energy- Ag produced biomass fuels including biodiesel, ethanol or methanol, and electricity generation. In temperate climates the hemp plant has the best combination of biomass yield and biofraccinational chemistry to produce biofuels. Hemp derived biofuels are clearly superior in potential yield to other ag produced biomass/fuel schemes such as the use of grains or stover from other plants such as corn, soybeans, switch grass, miscanthus or wood waste. Theoretically, the use of hemp in energy applications could make the US energy independent from oil and reduce pollution and environmental degradation at the same time.
- Advanced Composites and Building Materials
Inorganic Bonded Composites
Initial Line of Inquiry (Products/Applications)
Insulation--Brick and Decorative masonry-- Structural Masonry-- Panels--Structural members--Infrastructure--Transportation
Goal: To employ Hemp Hurds, using lime and cement as curing and/or bonding agents to create products/applications in the following areas:
1. Insulation- Lightweight, blow in, natural, non-toxic ,non-flammable, anti-fungal, bugs and animals wont eat it, process applicable to straw bales used for construction
2. Brick and Decorative Masonry- bricks, blocks, pads, flower bed liners, planters, pottery, stucco coating
3. Structural Masonry- walls, floors, buildings
4. Panels- hybridized/ particleboard, fiberboard, plasterboard, sheet rock, wonderboard, acoustic panel
5. Structural Members- reinforced beams, headers
6. Infrastructure- parking lot piers, highway dividers, curbs
7. Transportation- boat and ship hulls
Our first efforts will be to create “in house” “hand prototypes” that will demonstrate the physical and mechanical characteristics of products in each of the above areas. We will then engage appropriate commercial or university testing labs to verify and regularize our results producing documented lab prototypes and mixtures. This work will then allow these products to be submitted and approved under current building codes and/or patenting. Additional work will have to be done to create production prototypes with attendant machinery, packaging, etc.
Example Proposal- Insulation
Phase 1 “In House Hand Prototypes”
Materials- Grass/Wheat Straw and Hemp Hurds
Binder- Lime
Several samples of raw stalks will be reduced to suitable particle geometries and then cured in different percentages of lime/water solutions. The resulting treated fiber will then be informally tested “in house” and then submitted to a commercial testing lab for confirmation and documentation of the following characteristics:
Phase 2 Commercial Testing
▸ Particle Geometry
▸ Lime Content (mixture)
▸ R- Factor (insulating property)
▸ Flammability
▸ Anti-Fungal and Biological Properties
A Material Safety Data Sheet and other documentation will be produced which can be submitted to various agencies concerned with building codes and/or patenting (costs not included). “Production” prototyping and manufacturing phases will then have to be done resulting in “Turn Key Plans” with estimated costs and times delineated.
- Fiber Reinforced Polymers
These applications involve using hemp to replace eglass in such products as fiber glass, extruded, pulltruded and press moulded Thermoset and Thermoplastic products. It may also be possible to “graphitize” hemp fiber for use in high performance composites like Kevlar.
- Dry Process Platen Press Building Materials
Examples of this class of products include Panels such as particleboard, MDF (medium density fiberboard), and OSB (oriented strand boards). Major components of synthetic structural members such as LVL (laminated veneer lumber) and others. Previous research work done in conjunction with W.S.U Wood Materials Engineering Lab have proved not only that hemp is superior to wood fiber in these applications, but that it can be used in the mills that make these products as they are now configured with minor mechanical modification. This makes the building materials composite industry fairly unique among large scale users of industrial fibers. However, the scale of fiber use is so large in this industry (300-1400 tons of fiber per day 323 days per year that the ability to produce and supply this raw material will have to be developed using other applications that require lesser amounts of fiber until enough knowledge and experience with working with large quantities to assure reliability of supply that these larger manufacturers would require.
Fibre Alternatives is also interested in pursuing the development of non-formaldehyde, non-toxic bio-based binders in anticipation of both regulation changes
outlawing the use of traditional binders in composite manufacture and developing the potential for completely “green” composites.
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