A team of students from the University of California, Riverside’s Bourns College of Engineering recently won two awards at an international design competition for a material composed of rice husks that they created as a less costly, more environmentally friendly and termite resistant alternative to particleboard.
In the students’ design, the rice husks, which contain termite-resistant silica, replace woodchips found in traditional particleboard. The students then use environmentally friendly materials to bind the particleboard.
Initial cost estimates show four-by-eight-foot rice husk boards would cost about US$18.
While the main focus of the project was to create a building material for relief structures in the Philippines, there is also a strong potential to use the boards for furniture in the United States.
Click here for source (University of California Riverside)
Photo: University of California Riverside
