GreenFlip

Bamboo can find a medley of new application areas that have a tremendous market opportunity, potential as well as value addition. Bamboo products could find application in high absorption and mass consumption industries like roads and housing because of its attributes of high strength and low weight. The use for bamboo grids for reinforcement of roads is an innovative application, which has not been used elsewhere in the world. Bamboo makes for excellent construction material and Ecuador has used bamboo extensively and successfully in construction of homes. Bamboo offers a low-cost but strong housing solution. Bamboo briquettes are also a new application as far as India is concerned, but they are widely used in other bamboo growing countries. Another market that could be tapped is the niche market of bamboo shoots. It is a highly popular delicacy across the world and its consumption in India needs to be promoted. Bamboo’s capacity for regeneration makes it an eminently suitable replacement for wood and it is perhaps why bamboo is referred to as “tomorrow’s timber.”

 The last 15 years has seen a mushrooming of the variety of commercially available bamboo products. As well as traditional products, there is now successful commercial production of bamboo flooring, laminated furniture, building panels (similar to timber based plywood, chipboard or MDF), high quality yarn and fabrics, activated carbon, bamboo extracts and so forth. These are no longer novelty items but are successfully competing in the marketplace and gaining market share. These recent developments have created new opportunities for leveraging bamboo as a basis for rural industrialization and poverty reduction. In particular, the emergence of new higher added-value processing increases the sector’s potential economic impact, especially in poor rural communities, compared to traditional lower value processing industries.

Unfortunately not all of the bamboo plant can be used to such effect. Premium processing needs premium parts of the bamboo (typically the middle lower part of large culms). So modern bamboo industries need a mix of different businesses producing a variety of products, with premium bamboo parts going to premium uses (e.g. flooring, laminated furniture), mid quality parts (e.g. upper mid section) going to medium value added processing (e.g. blinds, mats, chopsticks) and the leftovers, sawdust and other processing ‘waste’ being used in the bulk processing industries such as paper, charcoal or chipboard.

But the use of bamboo in these industries would be possible only if it makes commercial sense. Unless it makes business sense to replace existing materials with bamboo, the crossover would not be possible. To make bamboo and its products economically viable, the intervention of a number of facilitators and stakeholders is required. 

From a production perspective, it is possible to divide the sector into distinct sub sectors, each of which can exist on a standalone basis or in combination with the others:

1. Handicrafts: characterized by high levels of semi-skilled and skilled manual processing of relatively small volumes of bamboo culms.

2. Bamboo shoots: essentially a high value agricultural crop that can either be grown primarily for shoots or in parallel with the production of culms.

3. Industrial processing: semi-mechanized and mechanized processing of comparatively large volumes of bamboo culms. Industrial processing industries can be further divided according to the value of the processing and grade of material used:

i. Premium processing (e.g. flooring, laminated furniture, Ply board)

ii. Medium value processing (e.g. Incense sticks, Blinds)

iii. Low value and bulk processing (e.g. charcoal, paper & pulp)

4. Unprocessed culms: supplied to the local construction industry or used for domestic household applications.  

From a production perspective, it is possible to divide the sector into distinct sub sectors, each of which can exist on a standalone basis or in combination with the others:

 

1. Handicrafts: characterized by high levels of semi-skilled and skilled manual processing of relatively small volumes of bamboo culms.

 

2. Bamboo shoots: essentially a high value agricultural crop that can either be grown primarily for shoots or in parallel with the production of culms.

 

 3. Industrial processing: semi-mechanized and mechanized processing of comparatively large volumes of bamboo culms. Industrial processing industries can be further divided according to the value of the processing and grade of material used:

 

i. Premium processing (e.g. flooring, laminated furniture, Ply board)

ii. Medium value processing (e.g. Incense sticks, Blinds)

iii. Low value and bulk processing (e.g. charcoal, paper & pulp)

 

           4. Unprocessed culms: supplied to the local construction industry or used for domestic household applications.

The Biomass Feedstock Development Program at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) recently released a publication entitled Bamboo: An Overlooked Biomass Resource? Bamboo is the common term for a group of woody grasses comprised of 1250 species. It is relatively fast growing and attains maturity within five years. The shortest species stands only four inches (10 cm) at maturity while the tallest reach 130 feet (40 m) with stem (culm) diameters of 12 inches (30 cm).

Most bamboo species grow in the tropics; however, some varieties occur naturally in subtropical and temperate zones of all continents except Europe. The growing zone ranges from latitudes 46 °N to 47 °S and from sea level to over 13,000 feet (4,000 m) in elevation. Asia alone has over 1000 species, most of it in natural stands. Current major bamboo-producing-and-using countries include China, India, Bangladesh, Indonesia, and Thailand.

Approximately 1,500 commercial applications of bamboo have been identified. These applications may be divided into the following broad categories:

• Construction and reinforcing fibers—agricultural and fishing tools, handicrafts, musical instruments, furniture, civil engineering (bridges, scaffolding), and buildings (house frames, walls, window frames, roofs, interior dividers).

• Paper, textiles, and boards—this also includes rayon, plywood, oriented strand board, and laminated flooring.

• Food—bamboo shoots are widely used in Chinese and other Asian cuisine.

• Bioenergy feedstocks—no references were found in the literature concerning the use of bamboo as an energy feedstock.

A mature planting of bamboo forms a dense stand with little light penetration. Bamboo is semi-deciduous, with leaves shed at the end of the growing season or for species on a two-year cycle, during the following growing season. Plants that have a biennial pattern of leaf emergence typically also exhibit strong shoot production in the year when leaves are not shed.

One of the more interesting aspects about bamboo is its rapid growth. The plant will send out rhizomes (underground horizontal plant stems) tens of meters in all directions that are 12 to 20 inches (30 to 50 cm) beneath the surface. Shoot buds appear on the sides of these rhizomes, and with the onset of warm spring weather, the buds lengthen and form a compact upright shoot that penetrates the ground’s surface. The plant now concentrates on growing the culm, without branches, as fast as possible. Tall species of bamboo have been observed to grow as much as 20 inches (0.5 m) per week. After the shoot reaches the same height as other culms, leafy branches appear near the top of the culm. Growth over the following years consists of thickening the walls of the culm and increasing the wood density.

Another interesting phenomenon about bamboo is its flowering patterns. A few species are known to flower frequently, even annually, and a few species flower a few culms at a time.

However, for the majority of bamboo species, the entire clump at a location will produce flowers and then die back over the next two to three years. For most of the latter species, flowering happens every 30 to 40 years although for some species the period is over 60 years. This infrequency of flowering makes bamboo hard to study and partially accounts for the lack of knowledge about bamboo.

Since bamboo is propagated vegetatively by planting rhizomes, it may not be known where the plant is in its flowering cycle. This uncertainty of when flowering and die-back may occur has long been a concern with bamboo growers. However, the ORNL report states that “…the threat of catastrophic flowering need not pose an economic problem for bamboo growers, as long as uneven-aged propagation material is maintained, and entire stands are replaced before they approach flowering age.”

For fuel analysis, nine bamboo samples representing three different species at three different ages were collected. The publication lists the proximate, ultimate, and elemental analyses for these nine samples. The typical moisture content for freshly field-harvested bamboo is approximately 15 percent. The ash content of all samples was one percent or less, with no correlation between ash content and bamboo sample or age of sample apparent. This ash content is similar to other woody biomass materials.

Volatiles in the samples ranged from 63 to 75 percent with the balance fixed carbon and, again, no correlation between volatiles and bamboo sample or sample age was determined. Heating values were comparable to wood at 16 million to 16.5 million Btu/ton (19.09 to 19.57 GJ/t) on a dry basis.

Three bamboo characteristics—low nitrogen content, low chlorine content, and low alkali indices—are particularly significant for combustion of bamboo. Alkali indices (defined as pounds of alkali oxide per million Btu of energy content) range from 0.23 to 0.7 (0.1 to 0.3 kg/GJ), generally below the limit of 0.4 to 0.8 lb/MMBtu (0.17 to 0.34 kg/GJ) known to cause adverse fouling and slagging in combustion systems. The presence of chlorine has been shown to increase the volatility of alkali metals during combustion. However, the low chlorine values present in bamboo samples suggest that the potassium that is present is unlikely to be volatile and therefore not a problem.

Bamboo must be grown vegetatively and 1-2 year old rhizome cuttings of 12 to 20 inches (30 to 50 cm) in length with nodes and buds present are sometimes used. Younger rhizomes provide the best results. Propagation with rhizome cuttings with at least a foot of culm attached also gave better results. Typically up to eight years are required to achieve a good stand and the final stand height may not be reached until 15-20 years have elapsed.

Harvesting of traditionally grown bamboo is un-mechanized and labor intensive, especially if only selected culms are to be harvested. Research in India suggests that clear-cutting does not significantly damage bamboo stands, so it may be possible to use machinery such as modified sugar-cane harvesters. The Western and Southeastern Regional Biomass Energy Programs sponsored bamboo harvesting tests in Alabama in the late 1990’s using a flail-cutter-head harvester developed at Texas A&M Kingsville and obtained acceptable harvesting results for bamboo approximately 30 feet tall.

Bamboo has frequently been characterized as having a high productivity; however, the ORNL study did not substantiate this characterization. Values for productivity in the literature range from 1 ton/acre/year (2.2 t/ha/year) in Northern India to 7 tons/acre/year (15.5 t/ha/year) in Central Japan. Data from the United States is very limited. Data from stands in South Alabama that were aged 14 to 20 years averaged 2.7 to 3.9 tons/acre/year (6.1 to 8.6 t/ha/year). These figures exclude branches and leaves, which accounted for 14 percent of the above-ground biomass. The ORNL report speculates that based on figures available from overseas, as well as the limited trials conducted in the US, intensively managed bamboo stands with fertilization may be capable of producing over 4.5 tons/acre/year (10 t/ha/year) under Southeast US conditions.

For additional information, contact the American Bamboo Society, c/o Michael Bartholomew, 750 Krumkill Road, Albany, NY 12203-5976, http://www.bamboo.org/abs/index.shtml.

Laminated bamboo furniture is a modern invention but has already become popular in many countries. It is produced from molded bamboo components and to the uninitiated eye the furniture is unrecognizable as having been produced from bamboo. A huge range of furniture can be produced, such as table and chairs, bookshelves, beds, cabinets and recliners. The furniture is durable, practical and has a modern appearance and in recent years elegant designs have been produced in China and Japan.

The laminated bamboo furniture unit is a relatively large-scale venture requiring start-up capital and a number of experienced personnel. By innovating new designs and seeking out new markets the unit will be able to develop rapidly and there are significant opportunities to open up exporting markets for laminated bamboo furniture in more affluent countries. The unit can easily be established at the community level, ideally as a cooperative venture. In view of the scale of investment required it might be preferable to establish the unit with the assistance of state agencies or NGOs to ensure the venture is successful and the community is the true beneficiaries.

Drawing the profile
In Furniture construction, full-scale drawings are utilized to enable one to pick measurements off the drawings while actual construction is on. For this purpose, the design is drawn full scale.

Bending with Heat
Following the practice of the cane furniture manufacturers of the North East, blow lamps were used to apply focused heat on to the poles and force bend it on a Wooden Horse (Mould). Basically the mould or horse is made out of solid wood. While one beam is perpendicular to the ground, there are two support beams parallel to the ground. The artisan makes a notch in the perpendicular and after hitching the bamboo in the notch, applies direct heat through the blowlamp. The notch is basically locking the bamboo in place and manual pressure is applied towards gravity to bend the heated pole. From time to time, a wet cloth is run onto the heated area of the pole so that the bend cools and solidifies. The pole is taken off the horse regularly, and measured on a drawing /profile to check for accuracy.
Though tedious and labor intensive, the method is able to achieve almost 100% accuracy. There is loss of the surface thickness as the excessive heat scorches the bamboo and the scraping the black skin reduces the thickness of the pole. However if totally solid bamboo is used, the loss of surface has a negligible effect on the strength of the bamboo.

Preparing the raw material
The outermost skin is scraped off to bring out the smooth luster and even colour of the bamboo. In the process, the knots on the internodes are also flattened /evened out.

For straight sections, the scraping is done before sizing. For sections that are to be bent into profiles, the bending is carried out before.

After the correct profile is achieved, the bamboo is then scraped to remove the outermost skin and the burnt marks.

Knot removing and planning surface
Various methods can be applied for surface finishing of bamboo. For knot removal, planer can be used to scrape the knots. The Team also explored using rudimentary sanding machine, and found it to be extremely useful in scraping the outer surface of the bamboo. This method reduces the drudgery of manual hand shaving.

Joinery and Assembly techniques
Most of the joinery used in Bamboo furniture is same as those used for wooden furniture. Simple joints like tendon -mortise joints work in totally solid bamboo. Plugs are inserted at hollow ends.

The furniture is an assembled frame-by-frame using carpenter vice. Bamboo dowels are used diagonally to seal joints. Before inserting the joints, industrial adhesive is used to add strength to the joinery.

Laminated blank making
Prepared sections of bamboo wood are coated with glue and then placed together in jigs to form the sub-sections of the furniture. Straight sub-sections can be pressed together in a standard hot-pressing machine, but curved sections require specially shaped jigs and are pressed by tightening bolts holdings the jig-forming elements together. They are then placed in a heated chamber for curing.

Finishing the product
At final assembly, the product is sanded before applying the termite resistant coating and melamine. Finishing involves the following stages, all designed to produce a high quality, uniform surface finish: Bleaching, prestaining, staining and coloring, wash coating, filling sealing or wash coating, glazing, top coating, rubbing, polishing and cleaning. Addition of upholstery and other fitting completes the furniture.

Market-Size: The consumption of wood other than plywood for making furniture is estimated at 3.36 million cubic meters in 2005 and set to rise to 4.62 million cubic meters by 2010. Bamboo as a substitute for wood to make furniture is expected to grow up to US$224 million by 2010. A range of furniture for school, office, showroom and home is made from bamboo. Bent-laminate furniture from bamboo is currently under prototyping. Consistent supply of processed bamboo is the key to the growth and development of this industry .

Source: Mayank, M (2008) Techno Economic Feasibility Study for Setting up of Bamboo SMEs, NMBA, India

Bamboo can play a role in disasters and relief in the following ways:

1. Bamboo’s ability to withstand vibrations help in mitigating disasters. Buildings made of bamboo survive earthquakes while concrete structures collapse. Latin American houses built with bamboo have survived earthquakes.

 2. Bamboo’s soil binding properties helps in preventing land degradation, soil erosion and land slides. It preserves watersheds. Underground roots can spread over a 100 square metre area. When rains fail bamboo rhizomes increase soil moisture. This can help in drought proofing.

 3. Bamboo plantation reduce the impact of winds and hence cyclone intensity.

In many parts of the world, through old practices and recent innovations, bamboo has been used for the purpose of construction, especially as a medium to cope with disasters like landslides and earthquakes. In Limon, Costa Rica, only the bamboo houses from the National Bamboo Project withstood the 1992 earthquake that reached 7.6 on the Richter scale. Properly constructed bamboo framed homes have demonstrated excellent wind strength. Flexible and lightweight bamboo enables structures to survive in earthquakes of Costa Rica as well as Columbia.

In the Latin American and Caribbean countries, due to increasing causalities due to earthquakes, in the continent, bamboo as a construction material is being promoted.

The aftermath of destruction in Costa Rica helped to focus worldwide attention on the potential of bamboo housing in disaster relief. A similar disaster struck the Cafetero Axis region of Colombia in January 1999. The Colombian Bamboo Society was quick to react to the urgent need for housing by earthquake victims. Society co-founders, architect Simon Velez and botanist Ximena Londono, worked together to design and build bamboo prototype housing for the victims. Their efforts also publicized the post-earthquake engineering studies that showed that housing which used traditional bamboo lattice work suffered far less damage than those employing “modern” concrete methods.

It started from an earthquake in Columbia where a watchtower of a local Coffee Park, in Pijao designed by Simon Velez and built by his partner Marcelo Villegas survived. Eighteen meters tall, and seven meter free overhang, it remained unmoved by the earthquake. The municipality of Pijao, with 8,000 inhabitants, located next to the epicenter only counted three casualties. Nearly all-traditional houses, which still stood, as if nothing had happened, were made from bamboo.

 Concrete bridges are dangerous and expensive in regions prone to landslides. Bamboo again comes to the rescue here. Some of the earliest of all suspension bridges were ones constructed with cables woven from bamboo strips. Throughout their long history, the Chinese have built suspension bridges to span fast-flowing rivers and deep ravines, and the Incas also designed hanging bamboo bridges.

Bamboo architecture in South America is born as an intelligent constructive reaction after seismic events. This is the case of the Peruvian “Quincha” , constructive system that is used since the XVII century in Lima, and in the rest of Peru and Ecuador and the Colombian “Bahareque”, very used from the XIX th centuryin the coffee growing area, west of Bogotá, in the highest seismical area of this country,. Both building systems resisted very well all the earthquakes that happened along their history. Costa Rica, without any bamboo tradition, created the Bamboo Foundation ca. 1980, and made a lot of quarters with bamboo houses that withstand very well the tremors caused by earthquakes. In Tucumán, Argentina, bamboo is used as a building material in rural areas.

 Bamboo offers the best properties for the seismic-resistant constructions. Because of its light weight, high resistance and great flexibility, Bamboo turns out to be particularly adequate to withstand earthquakes. In fact, even though they are covered with “ferrocemento” (iron-cement), Bamboo houses weigh almost 40% less than the traditional ones, being thus the seismic load reduced in the same proportion. Bamboo high resistance is comparable to that of the best wood. With its more efficient natural design, its flexibility provides it with a great capacity for seismic energy dissipation.

Bamboo is an important means for generating income and improving the nutritional status of over 2 billion poor and disadvantaged people. It also provides the resource base for expanding Small and Medium Enterprise sector, providing employment and income generating opportunities to alleviate poverty. As such it constitutes an excellent entry point for local poverty alleviation initiatives.

Bamboo benefits rural-urban communities because it, (a) lends itself to agricultural approaches, (b) can be grown on non-agricultural land with annual harvests, (c) is easily processed by simple tools because it splits linearly, (d) bamboo based industrial development benefits the communities through its demand for human resources for growing, harvesting, transportation and processing of bamboo, (e) bamboo growth also works for land protection, soil quality improvements including improved water holding capacity, higher water capture and recharge benefiting agriculture and food security.

Bamboo remains an untapped avenue of economic growth in India. Its premise is that if the bamboo industry is pulled from its current status of a peripheral industry and pushed centre stage to being a prominent and profitable one it can successfully reverse economic downturns and bring an about-turn in the economic fortunes of the country. This would be particularly true for the Central Gondwana regions (CGR, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Western Uttar Pradesh) of the country where the resource is abundant and could be sustainably harvested in the years to come because of its amazingly quick propagation.

With its inherent properties, bamboo combines the best of forestry and agriculture. It holds the promise of rejuvenating watersheds and degraded lands, fortifying the country’s ecological security. What would distinguish growth in this sector is that it would directly benefit large sections of the rural poor, as they could be involved in the plantations, harvesting and primary processing bamboo units. The long-term relationship with this sector would help the economically disadvantaged sections escape the debilitating poverty trap. The development of the bamboo sector could follow in the footsteps of the dairy sector whose miraculous makeover has enabled 10.5 million farmer families earn a supplementary income of Rs 1,800 per month. This industry’s growth model has been successfully replicated in 22 states in the country and it spells hope for the bamboo sector.

The blueprint envisaged in meticulous detail here for the bamboo industry projects a growth in the sector from Rs 65 billion in 2003-2007 to Rs 240 billion in 2013-2017; a growth that would could even overtake that of the biggest bamboo economy of the world, China. The overarching model also projects an employment opportunity of 1.67 million in 2003-2007 that would climb sharply to 11 million in 2017. For example, the NER, whose economies have been trailing behind, the estimates are the bamboo sector can take their gross domestic product from Rs 230 billion in 2003 to Rs 290 billion in 2007 that would translate into a growth rate of 5 per cent. The bamboo industry would have a potential of employing a total of 1.88 million people in this region by 2017.

                        KEY CONCLUSIONS

§         The global market for bamboo products USD 7 billion + per annum*

§         Bamboo based enterprises can prove to be the key in rural economic development and mass employment creation

§         Governments and local administration must provide sustained and consistent support if the sector is to develop

§         The future of global bamboo markets looks strong, driven by growing demand for sustainable wood-replacement products

§         The commercialization of recent technological innovations has created significant new market opportunities for floor tiles, laminated furniture, panels and activated carbon.

§         New, higher value added processing greatly increases the potential for poor economic development compared to traditional lower value enterprises. For example, every tonne of bamboo used for producing bamboo boards has 5 times more pro-poor financial impact than if used for paper.

§         Markets in US, EU, Australia and Japan present significant opportunities for several high value products

§         The competitiveness of future bamboo enterprises will be largely driven by ‘value added utilization’ of the entire bamboo plant. 

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*Bamboo shoots, furniture, handicrafts, chopsticks, blinds, tiles, panels, charcoal and activated carbon. The value for unprocessed bamboo used in construction industry is excluded.