I am researching how the materials I use are used in a wider sense, specifically how they are used within the design of interior architecture and furniture design. I want to have a broader knowledge of the process of how these materials are made and where they come from, looking at the sustainability of the production process, so I can better select and utilise materials throughout my practice as a designer.
Steel
To make steel, iron ore is first mined from the ground. It is then smelted in blast furnaces where the impurities are removed and carbon is added. The definition of steel is iron alloyed with carbon, usually less than 1%. The biggest steel producing country is currently China, which accounted for 50.3% of world steel production in 2015.
Steel itself is vital for just about everything we use. Whether it is buildings, clothes, chemical, cars, lamps or drinks cans - all depend on it at some point.
Steel is the most recycled material on the planet, more than all other materials combined. Steel retains an extremely high overall recycling rate, which in 2012, stood at 88 percent. The amazing metallurgical properties of steel allow it to be recycled continually with no degradation in performance, and from one product to another.
Steel is used for construction because of it's durability and affordability. It's used to build 'roads and rails, building infrastructure such as bridges and buildings, construction of modern architecture from skyscrapers and airports to residential homes and parks. Even buildings that are constructed using some other material (such as concrete) are often reinforced with steel beams. Inside our homes and in our daily lives, we use steel for appliances, furniture, and vehicles, as well as tools, bolts, screws, nails, and other basic building supplies.'
It has the highest strength-to-weight ratio of any other building material, making it ideal for buildings both large and small. It is also fire resistant, making it popular for homes.
Welding - To join steel pieces you use the process 'welding'. This process uses an electric arc to generate heat to melt the parent material in the joint. A separate filler material supplied as a consumable electrode also melts and combines with the parent material to form a molten weld pool. As welding progresses along the joint, the weld pool solidifies fusing the parent and weld metal together. Several passes or runs may be required to fill the joint or to build up the weld to the design size.
Pine Wood
When grown for sawing timber, pine plantations can be harvested after 30 years, with some stands being allowed to grow up to 50 (as the wood value increases more quickly as the trees age). A 30-year-old commercial pine tree grown in good conditions will be about 0.3 metres (1.0 ft) in diameter and about 20 metres (66 ft) high. After 50 years, the same tree will be about 0.5 metres (1.6 ft) in diameter and 25 metres (82 ft) high, and its wood will be worth about 7 times as much as the 30-year-old tree.
Small to medium diameter (preservation) poles are cut to length in the forest, transported to our sawmill and then undergo a debarking process. Posts may be shaven (smooth) or debarked (rough). Once debarked, posts are bundled, strapped and transferred to the drying yard. Post bundles (packs) are stacked in the open air until their moisture content has dropped to optimum levels ready for chemical treatment. This can take between 6 and 12 weeks depending on weather conditions.
Recycling timber is the environmentally friendliest form of timber production and is very common in countries such as Australia and New Zealand where supplies of old wooden structures are plentiful. Timber can be chipped down into wood chips which can be used to power homes or power plants.
Glass
Glass is made from liquid sand. You can make glass by heating ordinary sand (which is mostly made of silicon dioxide) until it melts and turns into a liquid.
When molten sand cools, it doesn't turn back into the gritty yellow stuff you started out with: it undergoes a complete transformation and gains an entirely different inner structure. But it doesn't matter how much you cool the sand, it never quite sets into a solid. Instead, it becomes a kind of frozen liquid or what materials scientists refer to as an amorphous solid. In a commercial glass plant, sand is mixed with waste glass (from recycling collections), soda ash (sodium carbonate), and limestone (calcium carbonate) and heated in a furnace. The soda reduces the sand's melting point, which helps to save energy during manufacture, but it has an unfortunate drawback: it produces a kind of glass that would dissolve in water. The limestone is added to stop that happening. The end-product is called soda-lime-silica glass. It's the ordinary glass we can see all around us.
Acrylic
Like all plastics, acrylic plastics are polymers. The word polymer comes from the Greek words poly, meaning many, and meros, meaning a part. A polymer, therefore, is a material made up of many molecules, or parts, linked together like a chain. Polymers may have hundreds, or even thousands, of molecules linked together. More importantly, a polymer is a material that has properties entirely different than its component parts.
Acrylic plastic sheets are formed by a process known as bulk polymerization. In this process, the monomer and catalyst are poured into a mold where the reaction takes place.
Plastics have a very good environmental profile. Only 4% of the world’s oil production is used for plastics and much less energy is used to produce it compared to other materials. Plastics are durable yet lightweight and thus save weight in cars, aircraft, packaging and pipework.
When plastics have completed their use phase, whether as a car bumper or a bottle, they can either be recycled or if this is not economic or environmentally beneficial the calorific value of the plastic can be recovered through energy from waste incineration to provide a much source of home-grown power. As a consequence plastics can be viewed as ‘borrowing’ the oil.