STTR Phase I: Rapid Characterization of Wood-based Materials

STTR 第一阶段：木质材料的快速表征

• 批准号: 2233237
• 负责人: Allix Coon
• 金额: $ 27.5万
• 依托单位: SANGALI, INC.
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2023-02-15 至 2025-01-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2233237&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: STTR; Phase; Rapid; Characterization; Wood

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Phase I project will enable the wood industry to certify materials along its entire supply chain, achieving reproducibility and reducing delays in the movement of goods, and supporting the economic competitiveness of American wood companies. The technology being developed by this project entails rapid and accurate wood species identification, which will bring transparency to the wood industry, helping to enable proper forest management that follows social, economic, and government standards. The technology will also promote quality control of products and characterization of residues leftover from wood processing, which in turn would facilitate their recovery and reutilization. By allowing manufacturers to achieve reproducibility in composite material manufacturing, the technology will encourage the recycling of wood waste and byproducts, supporting efforts to increase the sustainability and reduce the environmental impact of the wood industry. Lastly, this technology will empower organizations combating illegal logging by providing a new and powerful forensic tool, thus addressing deforestation and forest depletion with significant economic, societal, and ecological benefits. This Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Phase I project is applying state-of-the-art chemical analysis methods to develop a novel wood identification technology capable of determining with accuracy the species, age, and geographical origin of uniform or composite products. With the increase in demand for transparency in the wood industry and more stringent regulations comes a demand for new technologies that support compliance. Despite being a critical step in this process, current methods for species identification are time consuming, require highly specialized training, and provide little information on age and origin. By combining a highly sensitive type of spectroscopy with advanced statistical approaches (i.e., machine learning), this project is developing a method that can reliably identify chemical fingerprints that inform about wood species, age, and origin when compared against a database. This Phase I project will develop and demonstrate this approach when applied to U.S. woods, including the creation of a wood species database, with these key objectives: 1) analyze domestic woods to develop statistical methods to identify the species; 2) test the method’s ability identify species within composite materials; 3) test the method’s ability to identify the geographical origin of samples; and 4) test the method’s ability to determine wood age.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

这一小型企业技术转让(STTR)第一阶段项目的广泛影响/商业潜力将使木材行业能够在其整个供应链上对材料进行认证，实现重复性并减少货物运输的延误，并支持美国木材公司的经济竞争力。该项目正在开发的技术需要快速和准确的木材种类识别，这将为木材行业带来透明度，有助于实现遵循社会、经济和政府标准的适当森林管理。这项技术还将促进产品的质量控制和木材加工残留物的表征，这反过来又有助于它们的回收和再利用。通过允许制造商在复合材料制造中实现可重复性，该技术将鼓励回收木材废料和副产品，支持增加木材行业的可持续性和减少对环境的影响的努力。最后，这项技术将通过提供一种新的和强大的法医工具，使组织能够打击非法砍伐，从而解决森林砍伐和森林枯竭问题，带来显著的经济、社会和生态效益。这个小型企业技术转移(STTR)第一阶段项目正在应用最先进的化学分析方法来开发一种新的木材识别技术，能够准确地确定统一或复合产品的种类、年龄和地理来源。随着木材行业对透明度的需求增加，监管更加严格，对支持合规的新技术的需求也随之而来。尽管这是这一过程中的关键一步，但目前的物种鉴定方法非常耗时，需要高度专业化的培训，而且提供的关于年龄和起源的信息很少。通过将高度敏感的光谱类型与高级统计方法(即机器学习)相结合，该项目正在开发一种方法，该方法可以可靠地识别化学指纹，在与数据库进行比较时，这些指纹可以提供木材种类、年龄和来源的信息。这个第一阶段的项目将开发和演示这种应用于美国木材的方法，包括创建木材物种数据库，主要目标是：1)分析国内木材以开发识别物种的统计方法；2)测试该方法在复合材料中识别物种的能力；3)测试该方法识别样品的地理来源的能力；以及4)测试该方法确定木材年龄的能力。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。