As the upcoming sustainable material, transparent wood can replace conventional polymers because of its biodegradable and renewable features. Electronics, construction, packaging, and energy storage are some of the areas that have utilized transparent wood recently. The current study performs a cradle-to-gate assessment of the routes available for producing transparent wood and indicates that sodium sulfite, hydrogen peroxide, sodium hydroxide-based delignification, and infiltration with epoxy present minimum ecological impacts. It reduced global warming by 24 % and terrestrial acidification by 15 % compared to infiltration with polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) and delignification by sodium chlorite. The modeled system for industrial-scale transparent wood production presents reduced ecological impacts (human toxicity &lt; 97%, global warming &lt; 28% ) and electricity requirement (&lt; 98.8%) than laboratory scale. The end-of-life (EOL) assessment of transparent wood presents less environmental impact (10<sup>7</sup> times) than polyethylene (PE), indicating its potential for commercial adaptation to substitute petroleum-based polymers.

Transparent wood production: Life cycle assessment using emerging technologies and strategic scale-up framework

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