1st International Conference on Natural Fibers - English Version
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EnglishVoice Age
Middle Aged (35-54)Transcript
Note: Transcripts are generated using speech recognition software and may contain errors.
The state of the art starts to be impressive. Natural fibers are a renewable resource for excellence. They have been renewed by nature and human ingenuity for millennia. Besides, they are carbon neutral. Once they absorb the same amount of carbon dioxide they produce during processing, natural fibers generate mainly organic waste and leave residues that can be used to generate energy or make ecological housing materials. And at the end of their life cycle, they are 100% biodegradable natural fibers have widely enlarged their range of applications due to the intensive scientific and technical research undertaken by several institutes all over the world. Turning these amazing materials into an alternative feasible choice for many situations in civil engineering, medicine, sports, architecture design, among others that said the potentiality of these amazing resources spoke by themselves. This was the first main reason why roof and Gao and its colleagues at University of MNU intended to organize the first international conference on natural fibers sustainable materials for advanced applications in a very scientific. During three days of intensive share of knowledge. 250 participants from 40 countries got the chance to discuss all the new advances and potential developments by bringing together companies, universities, research and technological centers and entrepreneurs. According to Roger necessity is the mother of invention and the search of bios su in today's world justifies the discussion around natural fibers as a means to give life to revolutionary advanced materials. These natural fibers really can be alternative materials for these petrol the materials. And now we we came again to nature and we are trying to look the solutions in our modern nature. So we came again to natural fibers in order to study them perhaps in another way, because now we want to improve the properties of the natural fibers. And now we have the techniques to change to introduce, to enhance the properties of these fibers in order to turn them very interesting materials for very high advanced applications. Innovation is really the way to develop industry, especially in countries like European countries. So for the Portuguese industry, it's very important, it's very relevant to have innovation and they should think always about innovation in products. So this conference, when you put together people coming from different parts of the world, it is essential to achieve this goal even though the world is awakening for the immense variety of applications brought by the rediscovery of natural fibers. The organization of the conference felt that there haven't been enough opportunities to join the scientific community around the table in order to share new knowledge on this matter. That was one of the main reasons for the first international conference. There are several conferences on natural fibers but very oriented through handcraft and for textile applications. And nowadays, through the huge amount of scientific work that have been undertaken, undertaken during the last years, we've seen that natural fibers became very engineered materials. And the idea was to bring together to the same place and to put in contact several scientists from different areas. We have your biologists, we have chemists, we have textile engineers, we have mechanical engineers. So in the same conference and the idea was to bring all those people to this place and to discuss to have a broad discussion on the applications and on the futures on the characteristics of natural fibers from the agricultural point of view to the end use applications. So I guess this is a really innovative way of of these type of conferences because this is a transversal way of looking at the material. And this is a very important challenge of course, to look at the way we are producing the material and then the way we can transform, we can process this material, the way we can enhance their properties and the way we can apply the material in several areas. So this is a the main topic of the conference to discuss in a transversal way, the use of natural fibers defined the pretext, the reaction of researchers in investigation centers and universities from all over the world completely overcome the organization's best expectations. Well, I was planning to have a conference for about 9100 persons. Not more than that. Because in the first moment I was thinking that the topic, although it is very transversal, it was perhaps a narrow topic. I don't know if with this idea, I will claim the attention from people from the areas I want to address in the conference. So when the registrations and when the expressions of interest start to come to our organizing committee, well, I became very surprised because 250 persons came to this conference and registered to this conference and people from all over the world, we are covering from New Zealand or Australia to us or Brazil, from Norway to to South Africa. So we are covering all the world and perhaps the most important thing is the quality of the scientific research as we have we have here now in this industry that is in. So I guess this is a very good opportunity to define a future world view on the application and the use of natural fibers. The conference was developed under four major areas. The keynote presentations, the oral sessions, the scientific poster approach and the prototype competition, the natural Fiber NAICS award, four different ways to show and to share fiber knowledge between scientists and researchers. We have the oral sessions. So some of the works that have been sent to the conference have been selected for these oral sessions, then we have other other research works that are presented using a poster. So using a panel where we can explain the work we are doing, the research work we are doing. And then we have a very innovative way of looking at these scientific conferences that is to create a prize to create an award based on natural fibers. So the idea is to show that we can link the scientific approach with the market and technical approach on a regional level. According to Fernando Ferreira, professor from the School of Engineering of University of MNO, this is also a good opportunity for the university to show to the world all the work that has been developed in this field of expertise for the past decades. In a constant pursuit to find new uses for natural fibers with completely new approaches. Actually, there is a huge amount of work made in a Portuguese cluster in this field that simply needs to be spread and recognized by the general public. This cluster already exists but not too visible, should be more visible and should be more formalized. Because for instance, if I look for the activity in our research center, we have a lot of activity with, with companies. But for instance, I would say I can say that at this moment, we have more than 60 projects going on with companies, but it is not, you can see it easily during the three days of conference. Besides the time of presentations. The program also allowed several moments where personal contacts and interactions were made possible between all the participants. For now, we just have to wait until the fruits of this intensive networking may be collected and finally revealed with new fibrous ideas.