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Key message Increasing environmental pressures appearing over the last few years have led to important changes in the field of wood protection. In this context, new technologies, based either on thermal or chemical modifications, suggest increasing interest in prospect of programmed ban of biocide products.• Context The evolution of the regulations on the use of biocide products has led to important changes in the field of wood preservation, leading to an increasing interest for non-biocide treatments like thermal or chemical modifications to face to the programmed ban of biocide products.• Aims The paper reviews the different non-biocide alternatives developed currently on an industrial scale, highlighting their main characteristics and applications.• Results Different treatments have been developed on an industrial scale involving mainly thermal modifications and acetylation, furfurylation and DMDHEU constituting already available solutions.• Conclusion Different non-biocide alternatives already exist and will become more important in the next decades due to the increasing legislative pressure driven by environmental considerations.

The aim of this work was to study the wettability and chemical composition of heat-treated wood. Heat treatment was performed at 240°C under inert atmosphere on four European wood species (pine, spruce, beech and poplar). Contact angle measurements before and after treatment indicated a significant increase in wood hydrophobicity. Advancing contact angles of a water drop were in all cases systematically higher for heat-treated than for untreated wood. Chemical modifications of wood after heat treatment were investigated using FTIR and 13 C NMR analysis. FTIR spectra indicated little structural change which could be attributed either to carbon-carbon double bond formation or to adsorbed water. NMR spectra also revealed little chemical change except for the degree of cellulose crystallinity which was considerably higher in heat-treated wood and could explain the higher contact angles. KeywordsWettability Contact angle Heat-treated wood Chemical modification Brought to you by | Tokyo Daigaku Authenticated Download Date | 5/30/15 2:47 PM

XPS was used to characterize the chemical changes occurring after drying or applying a heat-treatment to beech wood samples. Our results indicate that the surface of this air-exposed material could be strongly affected either by the ambient atmosphere during storage or by the complex atmosphere in the oven during drying or heat-treatment. However, the O/C ratio measured after removal of a thin slice of a few millimetres of an untreated sample is in reasonable agreement with that calculated from the wellestablished chemical composition of beech. Through this methodology (equivalent to scraping for hard materials) it is expected to get a realistic characterization of the wood. The reliability and repeatability of the XPS measurements have been checked and the method applied to the study of the chemical changes of the beech samples subjected to heat-treatment. Heating at 240°C induces a significant decrease of the O/C ratio from 0.55 before to 0.44 after the treatment. Heat-treatment induces also a decrease of the C 2 carbon contribution (carbon atom bound to a single non-carbonyl oxygen) associated with an increase of the C 1 carbon contribution (carbon atoms bound only to carbon or hydrogen atoms), in agreement with chemical modifications reported previously in the literature. Thanks to the small analysed area of the equipment used in this study, different spots were analysed to demonstrate the presence or absence of a gradient of chemical composition due to thermal degradation or migration of extractives from within the wood structure to its surface. At the scale of our observations, the different wood samples investigated (dried or heat treated) appear to be homogeneous.

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Key message An efficient use of thermal treatment of wood requires a depth understanding of the chemical modifications induced. This is a prerequisite to avoid problems of process control, and to provide high quality treated wood with accurately assessed properties to the market. Properties and structural anatomy of thermally modified woods are slightly different than un-processed woods from a same wood species. So it is necessary to create or adapt new analytical methods to control their quality. Context Heat treatment as a wood modification process is based on chemical degradation of wood polymer by heat transfer. It improves mainly the resistance of wood to decay and provides dimensional stability. These improvements, which come at the expense of a weakening of mechanical properties, have been extensively studied. Since a decade, researches focused mainly on the understanding of wood thermal degradation, on modelling, on quality prediction and quality control. Aims We aimed at reviewing the recent advances about (i) the analytical methods used to control thermal treatment; (ii) the effects on wood decay resistance and (iii) the advantages and drawbacks of a potential industrial use of wood heating. Methods We carried out a literature review of the main industrial methods used to evaluate the conferred wood properties, by thermal treatment. We used papers and reports published between 1970 and 2015, identified in the web of science data base.. Results Approximately 100 papers mostly published after 2000 were retrieved. They concentrated on: (i) wood mass loss due to thermal degradation determination, (ii) spectroscopic analyses of wood properties, (iii) colour measurements, (iv) chemical composition, (v) non-destructive mechanical assessments and (vi) use of industrial data. Conclusions One of most interesting property of heat-treated wood remains its decay resistance. Durability test with modified wood in laboratory are expensive and time-consuming. This review displays data from different analytical methods, such as spectroscopy, thermogravimetry, chemical analyses or mechanical tests that have the potential to be valuable indicators to assess the durability of heat treated wood at industrial scale. However, each method has its limits and drawbacks, such as the required investment for the equipment, reliability and accuracy of the results and ease of use at industrial scale.

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