Antifungal and antibacterial activities of wood vinegars were investigated in this study in order to apply for the natural fungicides and food preservatives. The antifungal activities of wood vinegars were measured as a hyphal growth inhibition rate using four plant pathogenic, four wood rot and one mushroom pathogenic fungi. Inhibition effect on the fungi growth was

This study was conducted to investigate the effects of sawdust size and moisture content, pelletizing temperature and time on the durability of the pellets fabricated with larch and tulip tree sawdust. The durability of larch-pellet was significantly higher than that of tulip tree-pellet. For the larch-pellets, the durability of the pellets fabricated with > 18 mesh sawdust was higher than that of 8∼18 mesh sawdust. With the increases of pelletizing temperature and time, the durabilities of larch-and tulip tree-pellets steadily improved. The durabilities of larch-and tulip tree-pellets also increased as the moisture content of sawdust increased. In the comparison of durabilities between commercial pellets and larch-or tulip tree-pellets, the pellets fabricated with larch and tulip tree sawdusts in our study were less denser than commercial pellets, but the durability of most larch-pellets was satisfied with the 1st-grade pellet standard designated by Korea Forest Research Institute. In addition, the durability of tulip tree-pellets were higher than that of the 3rd-grade pellet standard. From the scanning electron microscopic observation of larchand tulip tree-pellets, the gap between the sawdusts of each pellet was reduced with the increases of pelletizing temperature and time. In particular, it was visually confirmed that the surface of the pellets made with the pelletizing temperature of 180°C for 3 min did not differ from that of commercial pellets.

In this study, both mild acid and alkali treatmentswith 1.0 wt% and 2.0 wt% of H2SO4 and NaOH solution were applied to evaluatethe effects on chemical compositions of wood biomass. Yellow poplar (Liriodendron tulipifera L.) and larch (Larix kaempferi C.) were chosen due to major species planted in Korea. Chemical treatments of biomass were carried out by being soaked in either acid or alkali solution with 1:20 ratio for 72 hours at ambient temperature. Afterward, lignin, 5 major reduced sugars, ash contents and elemental composition were determined. To statistically understand the relationshipbetween samples and chemical treatments, the Tukey test, simple linear regression model and ANOVA analysis wereintroduced using a statistical software R. As results from both wet chemistry and statistical analysis, yellow poplar was more affected on the lignin and xylose contents by acid treatments under these experimental conditions. Meanwhile, larch was more affected on the composition of galactose and lignin by alkali treatments. A series of results in this study would show that equivalent chemical treatment makes a change the chemical composition of each species.

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