Making the Modern World: Materials and Dematerialization

The global market for liquid oxygen reached about 75 Gm3 in the year 2000 and it was more than 150 Gm3 in 2010

Reprieve came only with the slow adoption of metallurgical coke: it was

A new North American house of 200 m2 requires about 14 t of lumber (typically yellow pine) and another 14 t of panel products (mostly plywood) for a total mass of 28 t.

Paper

burning natural gas in large boilers: up to 60% of the fuel used in combined-cycle generation (gas turbine followed by a steam turbine)

agent of more.

Reprocessing shortens the cellulose fibers and

Clearly, there is no recent evidence of any widespread and substantial dematerialization – be it in absolute or relative (per capita) terms – even among the world's richest economies.

By 1750, after decades of marginal improvements, a standard-sized, Newcomen, inefficient steam engine developed about 15 kW, weighed nearly 9.6 t, and had a mass/power ratio of about 640 g/W (Smil,

Graphene is a two-dimensional (one-atom thick) carbon fabric that combines extreme mechanical strength with exceptionally high electronic and thermal conductivities (Novoselov et al., 2012). Its tensile strength is 100 TPa, 5 orders of magnitude greater than that of steel, its stiffness