Tensei is a biomaterials tech company using primarily agricultural residue fibres such as straw and bio waste streams to produce new performance fibres to enhance or make new paper, textiles, and plastics.
The company refers to these new fibres Optifibres, describing them as "a new fibre brand category over and above the traditional wood and synthetics fibre categories".
The technology to facilitate these new fibres is a machine learned system that enables the firm to input desired attributes for a paper or textile or new material composite and produce an Optifibre that corresponds to the given specification.
Furthermore, this Fibre Calculator can be selective, filtering for example, by locally available materials to consistently produce the same output thus optimising the supply chain logistics and addressing concerns over consistency.
Tensei describes the technology as "a huge and potentially disruptive project" that can provide an essential service as current raw material supplies such as wood pulps become scarcer and demand grows.
In addition, the technology has the poential to provide farmers and industry with an additional revenue stream from plant fibres and bio waste, respectively.
The result, the company says, is post consumer waste with the strength of a virgin fibre and a compelling clean tech proposition in the form of reduced transportation, energy for additional wood fibre refining to achieve similar attributes, and new feedstocks for multiple industries.
