Beech wood was heat-treated in a pressure reactior at twenty different settings of temperature, steam pressure and duration. The temperature and pressure were chosen to ensure either dry, moist or wet conditions during the thermal conversion of the beech wood samples. The treated beech samples were characterized by four different physical/chemical markers: dry mass loss (due to hemicellulose degradation), equilibruim moisture content at 20°C/65%RH (showing loss of hygroscopicity), the electron paramagnetic signal (lignin radical content) and the O/C-elemental composition ratio. All markers appeared to be mutually linked, provided that the samples were thoroughly leached in water before testing to facilitate the relaxation of matrix polymers and removing trapped degradation products in the matrix. The O/C-marker has the valuable and unique property of providing an absolute metric for the thermal treatment level by standardized analytical procedures, correlating with many physicochemical properties of the material. This result is relevant for the quality assessement of randomly picked thermally modified wood samples, independent of the raw material and processing data from the manufacturer.<br/>

Beech wood thermal treatment level characterization by different treatment level markers

2019 Fall National Meeting

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