Interior walls that look like hardwood paneling are in fact made of paper-thin wood veneer on top of Nomex honeycomb, a lightweight paper-and-resin material normally found in jet airplanes.

FORBES: Mine's Lighter

The material then bonds to the inside of the pipe and the resin cures or hardens, creating a new pipe within the pipe and restoring the integrity of the drain or sewer.

BBC: Sewer renovation work to begin in Glastonbury

Dr Greenhalgh's solution was to use a polymer gel-based resin that combines two networks of cross-linking structures, one that holds the material together and the other providing a conduit for charged particles.

ECONOMIST: Carbon-composite batteries

Like traditional composites, Dr Greenhalgh's material consists of woven sheets of carbon fibres which are made rigid using a cured resin.

ECONOMIST: Carbon-composite batteries