Although Saudi Arabia and Arab Emirates are immersed in a particular war for have the most beast buildingstalking about megaconstructions is to automatically look at China. The Asian giant has some of the works more tremendous, impossible bridges and even Higher abandoned skyscraper in the world. And one of those pharaonic constructions is the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao bridge.
With a length of 55 kilometers, it turns out that it is not only formed by steel and concrete: the secret ingredient is bamboo. And according to those responsible, continue like the first day.
The bridge. After six years of planning and another eight of construction, in 2018 China opened the imposing bridge that connects Macao and Zhuhai. Its 55 kilometers, 6.2 of them underground, allow to convert a trip that previously lasted three hours into a ‘walk’ of just 30 minutes. And something that resonated in its day was the 420,000 tons of steel (which would be equivalent to 60 Eiffel towers), its more than one million cubic meters of concrete and the flexibility necessary to support typhoons and earthquakes.
It is a barbarity, with an underground stretch that disappears and emerges from the sea
It looks like a ship, but it is one of the two inputs/exits of the sea
Bamboo. It turns out that the mixture added a plant: bamboo. And it is something that is not so weird, since, as we can read In South China Morning Post, China is the largest bamboo producer in the world and is something to give way.
In the aforementioned bridge, this element was used on the panoramic platforms that are found throughout the same and the official newspaper Science and Technology commented a few days ago that, after six years installed, these panels have resisted sunlight, typhons and The corrosion of seawater, keeping “as solid as ever.”
One more element. Lou Zhichao is a member of the Bamboo Research Institute of the Forestry University of Bamboo and pointed out that, apart from in China, bamboo occurs mainly in developing countries, which gives China a unique advantage and position to the time to process this bamboo.
His team, in fact, has been developing more advanced technologies to process bamboo a decade, causing the process to emit less co₂ while encouraging the use of bamboo under constructions due to a relationship between resistance and weight higher than some alloys of some alloys of some alloys of steel. In addition, it can replace wood, plastic and steel itself in some constructions.
Bamboo II. Now, although it has interesting properties, it also has a problem: it is prone to decomposition. This means that when bamboo facilities are done, toxic preservatives must be used that make the material much less ecological. The chickens that come through those that come out in environmental matters, basically.
And, precisely, the Zhichao team has been working in recent years. One of its latest advances in research is a heat treatment that eliminates nutrients that cause the accelerated decomposition of the material. This allows to reduce its processing time by 50% while increasing durability outdoors without antimoho treatments.
Adolfo Suárez Madrid-Barajas airport. You don’t have to go to China to see great structures in which bamboo is clear protagonist. In Spain we have examples such as Madrid airport Adolfo Suárez Madrid-Barajas, in which the roof of terminal 4 is formed by lames 100 mm wide of bamboo sheet.
In total, there are 200,000 m² of bamboo with fire resistance and was the ideal material due to the peculiar curved forms of the terminal roof design. It is also a material that was raised for the Futurist Ciudad Oceanix City And the protagonist of the bamboo towers that Paris wants to build for 2050.
And scaffolding. Beyond in places as punished as a bridge in such a complicated area and applications in other buildings, bamboo is absolute protagonist in Hong Kong. Specifically, in its skyscrapers, like an exoskeleton that really is a system of Scaffolding During the construction of buildings.
For the rest, Zhichao continues to work to expand the use of bamboo as high quality material for several reasons. One because it absorbs 50% more co₂ than common trees. Another because it is estimated that its crop and market benefits some 50 million people throughout the country. And, therefore, he hopes that the government “finance the development of key technologies and reinforce regulation by national and local standards to boost the industry.”
Industry tech. Apart from in structures, bamboo is positioning as a material that can be very useful in other sectors. An example is that of consumer technology not as an element that goes within the devices, but as part of the packaging. A few years ago, on a visit to the Innovation Center of Lenovo, They told ushow they were starting to use bamboo in the boxes of their laptops.
Bamboo box to the right. On the left too, but after a year underground.
The reasons were environmental due to the degradation of their fibers in normal conditions in nature. In fact, it can be buried directly in the garden to use it as fertilizer. In the photo that we leave just on these lines you can see two boxes, one new and one after a year underground, to appreciate its degree of decomposition.
And, that sustainability is one of the keys (along with many others, of course) of decarbonization.
Images | Xataka, Moso, NRG800, Chronus, HMZB, Chris 73, Kamakura
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