For centuries farmers have looked for ways to use their straw, whether it was building a straw roof or making a straw hat.
The automobile industry has now come up with a modern answer.
Ford is using wheat straw to manufacture the third row storage bin in its 2010 Ford Flex, and the company’s scientists don’t want to stop there.
“We do see it migrating to different vehicle lines,” said Ellen Lee, a plastics research expert with Ford in Dearborn, Michigan.
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“We’re investigating a lot of other types of applications…. Some are under hood, under body, as well as exterior.”
Lee has teamed up with researchers from Ontario’s University of Waterloo for the last few years to learn how to incorporate wheat straw into plastic.
The scientists determined that a formula of 20 percent straw and 80 percent plastic produces a part with satisfactory strength and stiffness.
“We did a lot of work looking at different formulations, varying the percentage of wheat straw,” she said, noting more wheat equalled more stiffness.
“You can increase your strength to a certain point and then as you add more (wheat), your strength will decrease but the stiffness remains…. For this particular application, the storage bin, the 20 percent formulation was the best.”
Lee said it costs more to manufacture the storage bin from wheat rather than from just plastic.
However, economies of scale will take effect as the company finds other uses for wheat straw.
“Because there are such low volumes, with just one small application … we’re expecting in the future the cost will come down, to be a reduction in cost from the material that we were using,” she said.
The manufacturing process is more efficient when wheat straw is incorporated into the material, she added.
“It turns out we can mould them at lower temperatures and mould them slightly faster, than we would a conventional material.”
John Kelleher, owner of Kelleher Ford Sales in Brandon, said the cost savings and environmental benefits means using wheat straw makes sense.
It also looks good.
“If you didn’t know better, you’d think it was 100 percent plastic,” Kelleher said.
