Joining up the R&D dots

Summary
• Forestry Commission Scotland has its own research institute at Edinburgh Napier University.
• Most of the FPRI’s work is industry led.
• Cellulose from some timber species is being transformed into a Kevlar-like substance.
• A Wood Products Innovation Gateway project concerns the manufacture of home-grown cross-laminated timber.

In May 2010, Edinburgh Napier University grouped its many research centres into nine research institutes, each linked to a key area of Scottish government economic policy. In Scotland the Forestry Commission is effectively a government department and so this sector too has its own research institute at the University – the Forest Products Research Institute (FPRI).

But what does the Institute actually research and of what benefit is this to the forestry and timber processing and manufacturing industries in the UK? The first thing to be said is that most of the work carried out is done in collaboration with companies, ie it is applied research, industry-led. Over the past decade a wide variety of projects have been carried out under the auspices of the University’s Centre for Timber Engineering (CTE) – one of five research centres in FPRI – but prior to the emergence of the Institute not all of these sat easily under the mantle of engineering.

UK Sitka spruce

Now located within the Institute’s Centre for Wood Science and Technology, for example, is the Strategic Integrated Research in Timber (SIRT) project. Under which banner CTE in partnership with Glasgow University and Forest Research set out 10 years ago to characterise the properties of the UK Sitka spruce resource. The results of testing timber from forests all over Scotland, Northern Ireland and the north of England have since been published and this information is now being applied in several new timber products being developed by FPRI.

But more of these later – importantly, the same procedures are now being applied to other plantation species in the UK, for example, Scots pine, larch and Douglas fir in order that we might better understand how to deliver higher added value from these resources too.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, at what might be described as the rocket science part of the Institute, its Plant Science and Biopolymer Research Centre, the cellulose that species like Sitka spruce are such good sources of is being transformed into an advanced material stronger than Kevlar or carbon fibre. The potential for such a lightweight, high-strength material that can be produced from renewable resources is immense, and a variety of spin-off projects are being explored.

Timber possibilities

Professor Philip Turner, director of the Centre and of the Institute itself, anticipates planes, cars and perhaps even spacecraft being manufactured from materials such as these – a very long way from what most people currently understand as timber products, but ones that will add enormous value to the forestry sector.

The fourth Centre, the Wood Studio, has a remit to foster innovation in the use of timber in architecture and construction. To this end it secured a major award from the European Regional Development Fund to deliver to commercial reality 20 or more new products, process improvements, or construction systems that use UK-grown timber – all within a three-year timescale.

Entitled Wood Products Innovation Gateway (WPIG), this £1.48m project began life in January 2011, with funding to match the European award coming from Forestry Commission Scotland, Scottish Enterprise, Confor and Wood for Good. Again, the work is wide-ranging and largely driven by industry demand.

Cross-laminated timber

The largest WPIG project at present concerns cross-laminated timber and the potential to manufacture this in-demand product from Scottish-grown timber. It is now 12 months into an 18-month schedule, and considerable progress has been made on trial manufacturing, structural testing and market appraisals.

The results of this project are due to be presented at a conference at the University on September 4, but already there is much optimism that we might see CLT made from home-grown timber in production in this country in the relatively near future (see p7). Much will depend on wider economic circumstances, of course, but parallel work on other solid timber products is also being carried out – dowelled laminated timber and nailed stack planks being but two examples.

The former is a low-tech, low investment possibility that could conceivably be produced in small volumes at different, near-to-market locations around the country; a trial version of the latter is already installed in a new house at the just-opened Housing Innovation Showcase at Dunfermline in Fife and is an example of the kind of collaborative timber development projects Edinburgh Napier University is engaged in (in this instance with two separate architectural practices).

A smaller example of the research and development of niche timber products being undertaken within the WPIG orbit is the development of charred external timber cladding. Currently much in demand from architects, the product has until now been a bit hit and miss, given that most built examples in the UK to date have required the application of a blow torch on site – hardly the best way to avoid an increase in perceptions of timber as a fire hazard in construction.

By working with a small hardwood sawmill, techniques for manufacturing and delivering to site a product of consistent quality and availability are being trialled. The results of this should be available shortly and, if successful, should provide the sawmill with a niche product. Again, the imperative is to raise the value of UK timber and to improve business viability at all levels of the industry.

Industry partnerships

There is more, much more. The important point to reiterate is that these developments are industry-led and it is in this conjunction of academic research with business demand that the future lies. At the strategic levels of European, UK and Scottish government funding, things are getting tighter and it is unlikely support finance will be found for projects that are unable to demonstrate real demand and the potential for larger partnerships to pool resources and thereby reduce risk to all in the search for real, value-added innovation.

For SMEs in the forestry and timber sectors interested in the development of new, value-added timber construction products and systems, Edinburgh Napier University’s Forest Products Research Institute can be a first port of call – the industry has its own joined-up R&D mechanism available for use.

• Peter Wilson is director of the Wood Studio, Forest Products Research Institute (www.napier.ac.uk/fpri)