Use "wet cloth" knitting technology and "diaper" water retention technology

According to the UNEP report, deserts are expanding at a rate of 60,000 km2 per year. If the scope is extended to dry land affected by desertification, the area will reach one-fourth of the total land area of ​​the earth, about 36 million km2. Desertification is not something that is about to come, but a "crisis in front of us."

The biggest reason why plants cannot grow in the desert is that sand cannot be stored. Even if it rains, the rain will quickly seep into the depths of the ground, and the roots of the plants will not absorb the water. Without plant cover, the gravel will drift away in all directions with the wind. Sand deposits also lose water storage capacity and become desert. This is why the desert is expanding.

"wet cloth" knitting technology

On the outskirts of Johannesburg, the main city of the Republic of South Africa, at the gold mine site, there is a “waste pile” of slag piled up by mining. The slag contains harmful substances such as radiation, and plants cannot grow naturally. The sand particles scattered with the wind and blown to the adjacent residential areas caused harm, which became a serious social problem.

In the corner of this ridiculous land, there is an oasis of green grass. In just two months, the lawn was made by MITSUKAWA (Echizen City, Fukui Prefecture), which is a knitting company that manufactures sportswear. Matsumoto Mauden, president of MITSUKAWA, recalled: "I saw a TV show introducing desert greening. I suddenly saw a thought that our knitting technology should come in handy."

Developed by President Matsumoto and applied to South Africa, it is a knitted product called "ROLLPLANTER". A pipe having a diameter of about 10 cm and a length of about 1 m was made of a knitted material, and the inside was placed in the culture soil. Two or three strips of the substrate tube are laid on the sand like a checkerboard, then sown between the substrate tubes and watered regularly. In this way, plants can grow in the desert.

The weight is to be arranged like a checkerboard. Although the inside of the square surrounded by the matrix tube is still desert, it is easy to store water under the surrounding of the matrix tube, and the roots which are found out from the matrix tube also grow new sprouts. Therefore, the area where the substrate tube is laid can be overgrown with plants. The matrix tube acts as an obstacle and there is no need to worry about the seeds scattering with the sand.

The material of the matrix tube is biodegradable polylactic acid fiber developed by Toray. This fiber is made of plant starch and decomposes into water and carbon dioxide gas over time, putting a small burden on the environment.

Sasaki Kosuke, head of the Toray Fiber GR and LI Business Promotion Office, said: "General biodegradable fibers are degraded by ultraviolet radiation. We have improved the fiber against strong sunlight in the desert. With a precision design , it takes about 10 years for the greening to be fixed, and the fiber will return to the soil during this time."

In addition to retaining the moisture needed, another important factor is that "plants can take root and grow on their own." Because in the loose sand, the plants are difficult to take root, and the wind will be scraped.

With ROLLPLANTER, the roots of the plant will pass through the knitted mesh, and they will be able to take root firmly. This depends on the flexibility of the knitwear.

MITSUKAWA is the first company in the world to develop wet cloth base fabrics. The base fabric must be stretchable to accommodate the expansion of the joints and skin. By the weaving technique that was developed in the development of the base fabric, the function of "the soil that does not leak, and the growth of the roots can pass through the mesh" (Mr. Matsumoto of MITSUKAWA) is realized.

Keep water with raw materials of diapers

The new technology that has attracted attention is not just fiber and knitting. There is also a super absorbent resin that absorbs urine on the diaper. Water retaining agents using such resins are also popular technologies. Nippon Shokubai has been in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region and other regions of China, the use of water retention agent "ACRYHOPE" to carry out afforestation.

ACRYHOPE is an aggregate of round particles having a diameter of about 1 to 3 mm. At the moment of contact with moisture, it will absorb water and expand, and the diameter will increase to about 5 to 7 mm. It is mixed into the sand in an appropriate amount. “It can absorb water during rainfall and release water when it is dry to ensure the water needed by plants,” said Harada Yoshida, executive director of Nippon Shokubai.

The resin for the diaper was improved to produce ACRYHOPE. One example is the expansion of the size of the granules to more than twice the size of the diaper article. Because of the large volume of sand, it forms a wonderful "gap" when buried in the ground. The goal is to introduce air into the soil to promote plant growth.

Another improvement is the strength of the particles. The company has achieved ACRYHOPE's strength of "not being broken and deformed when it is buried about 30cm underground." Because the deformation of the particles will destroy the function of water absorption and water release.

However, if the strength is too high, the ability to absorb water and release water will be lost even if it is not deformed at all. "We use polymer chemistry technology to uniformly add a columnar structure to the particles, thus taking into account the strength and water retention capacity," explains He Ke, director of the Japan Catalyst Water Absorbent Resin Research Institute. In the depth of about 30cm, 1g of ACRYHOPE can absorb 100g of water, about twice as much as the usual water retention agent.

The biggest problem is cost

The two technologies of fiber and resin have made desert greening a step forward. But the subject still exists. The biggest problem is cost.

The amount of ACRYHOPE used by Japanese catalysts is not large, about 0.5 to 1 g per 100 g of sand. But the unit price is "slightly higher than the diaper supplies."

MITSUKAWA is the same as ROLLPLANTER developed by Toray. Compared with the laying of sand control nets, the cost will increase to about 1.5 to 2 times. But Toray’s director of Toray emphasized: “Considering that almost no artificial maintenance is required, the sand can be managed and greened, and the total cost will be lower.”

The factors produced by the desert are complicated. In addition to climate change such as reduced precipitation, it is also affected by human factors such as deforestation, grazing, and farmland expansion. In places where excessive groundwater is pumped, the problem of pumping salty groundwater to the ground and causing the plants to die is also occurring.

The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology predicts that the popularity of desert greening technology will wait until 2029. Because the cause is not unique and costs a certain amount of money, it is not easy to solve the problem.

Desertification can directly lead to global food shortages. In this case, how do you combine diverse technologies and come up with sustainable implementation measures? The sand left in the "hourglass" - time is running out.

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