A promising Canadian technology may turn agricultural waste into a building product that could remedy problems of housing, carbon emissions and earthquake-proof construction in China.

Developed by the Alberta Research Council in Edmonton, the technology uses wheat straw — the residue from cutting the crop and removing the grain — to make a plywood substitute called Oriented Split Straw Board (OSSB).

The three little pigs got it wrong: in earthquake zones, a straw house is superior to one made of bricks. (Alberta Research Council)

Netherlands-based Panel Board Holding Ltd. is using the technology at its new plant in Yangling, in Shaanxi province, which went into production Oct. 18.

The panels are made by compressing straw and adding resin. The plant can produce up to 5,000 four-by-eight-foot-foot panels a day, enough to build between 30 and 35 houses.

China doesn’t have enough trees for large-scale lumber production, but it has plenty of wheat straw. It will need 200 million new houses in the next 20 years, and PBH is planning two more factories.

PBH president Krijn Leendertse says the technology will help reduce carbon emissions, “preserve the world's forests, and develop sustainable growth in developing and emerging economies.”

Panels more earthquake resistant

Whether builders will be willing to try something new — replacing the bricks and mortar now widely used — is an open question, but in a country still recovering from a devastating earthquake in April 2008, it has a definite attribute. OSSB panels are more flexible and make buildings “more likely not to completely collapse in earthquakes,” Wayne Wasylciw, ARC's project leader, told CBC News.

Adoption of OSSB panels would also reduce carbon emissions by creating a market for the straw that farmers now burn to clear their fields. Mining the clay needed to make bricks also requires removing topsoil and losing arable land.

The technology took 15 years to develop. It suffered numerous setbacks but finally launched with the help of one of the world’s richest men and the patience of a summer research student.

ARC scientists discovered in the mid-1990s that wheat straw could work, but the project languished until 2002, when Leendertse got wind of the research.

A 90-minute meeting in ARC’s Edmonton lab led a few weeks later to a formal agreement. Over the next seven years, the developers went through a series of equipment manufacturers. Investors came and went.

The PBH plant in Yangling, Shanxi Province, can produce 500 OSSB panels a day. (Alberta Research Council)

Then there was the effort to produce the first test panel. The researchers wanted to split each straw tube to more thoroughly spread the resin and to make each straw as long as possible, for a maximum strength- to-weight ratio.

So, day after day, summer student Brad Wasylyk used a razor blade to meticulously slice wheat straws.

A month’s work produced a pile about 20 centimetres deep in a 150-litre plastic drum, enough to make into a 30 cm-square board. “This was barely enough panel to test,” said Wasylciw. “However, it did allow us to prove out the concept.”

That led to a device to scale up the process, splitting one tonne per hour. That led to a patent and the birth of the technology, something for which Wasylciw remains grateful to Wasylyk.

'It has been an experience of a lifetime.’—Wayne Wasylciw, Project Leader, Alberta Research Council

“Never did I suspect that little pile of straw in that barrel would lead us taking this technology to the other side of the world to China over 10 years later. It has been an experience of a lifetime.”

The breakthrough in launching into a commercial venture came when the venture received long term financial backing from Gunter Herz and his private equity firm Mayfair GmbH. Herz, with a net worth of $2 billion, made number 334 on this year’s Forbes List of the world’s 793 billionaires. His support, in the middle of an economic downturn, means PBH “can weather the storm” until its product gains market acceptance, according to Wasylciw.

Future products could include furniture, concrete forms, interior decoration and fireproof panels. That future makes Wasylciw “very nervous,” he admits. OSSB represents a challenge to people in rural communities, he said, “to abandon their traditional method of construction for a western- based system. I wonder if such a change would be accepted by us in North America if presented the option.”

The challenge is no smaller in North America. “Will people here accept their homes being made from wheat straw?" he asked.

“Society will be putting a lot of trust into us by accepting this product. While I am proud if they do accept it, I am also vigilant to protect the trust they have placed in the product.”