How Liquid wood could replace plastic. Patented 1996.

Added: 2026-05-20

[00:00:00]30% of every tree is thermoplastic. Heat it past 160° C, it melts. Mold it, it cools harder than the wood. We have known this since 1996.

[00:00:12]This is not theory. The molecule [music] is lignin, the polymer that stiffens cellulose into wood.

[00:00:19]Two German engineers worked out how to liquefy it in 1996.

[00:00:24]Their company has been shipping it since [music] 1998.

[00:00:28]Here is the chemistry. Lignin is a phenolic polymer. Heat it gently, it flows. Run it through a standard injection molder at 160° C, lower temperature than petroplastics, lower energy.

[00:00:42]The cooled part has mechanical [music] properties in the range of polyamide, nylon. It barely shrinks. It is stiffer [music] than the wood it came from. And when it ends its life, you bury it. It rots back into water, humus, and CO2.

[00:00:58]Fitzer's own estimate, lignin alone [music] could replace a quarter of the world's plastic today on existing equipment. The patent is 30 [music] years old. The factories did not switch.

[00:01:11]This is not a future material, it is a [music] past one.

[00:01:15]What gets me is how ordinary the chemistry is. Heat, mold, cool. None of this is breakthrough physics.

[00:01:23]We just decided not to do it. Every tree is a factory that nobody switched on.