MAINE PUBLIC • July 30, 2020
The University of Maine has received a patent for a process to create more environmentally friendly construction materials using a slurry of tiny cellulose fibers derived from wood. “In a way it's like wood gluing wood together,” says UMaine Chemical and Biomedical Engineering Professor Doug Bousfield. Bousfield is the co-inventor of the process, and he says that, when dried, this combination of wood chips and cellulose nanofibers becomes a hard material that can be shaped into boards without the use of formaldehyde.