Improving timber properties of fast growing species by heat treatment

Abstract

Heat treatment is a useful tool to improve some properties of wood and give new market to fast growing species. The effect of heat treatment in saturated steam was tested on poplar wood and its effect on some physical and mechanical properties determined. It was shown that the mass loss is well dependent on the treatment intensity and that the colour variation presents a linear trend with the mass loss. Surprisingly the volume after treatment resulted increased. Weak heat treatments up to 4% of mass loss have an increasing effect on MOE. After 4% of mass loss MOE tends to decrease getting lower of untreated samples once 5% of mass loss is reached. According to FTIR analysis the main effect of the heat treatment can be identified in the degradation of the hemicelluloses and in particular of the glucoxylans. A chemical degradation of the hemicelluloses can be observed by FTIR since very low mass losses.

Thermal modification kinetics and chemistry of poplar wood in dry and saturated steam media

“…The samples used for HT modification measure 30 (L) by 8 (R) by 8 (T ) mm 3 and were used to assess the ΔML after saturated steam HT Goli et al (2014a). Both oven and saturated steam samples were sawn from boards extracted from the same tree.…”