The Effects of Temperature and Moisture on the Accelerated Aging of Paper

Deacidification of Acidic Books and Paper by Means of Non-aqueous Dispersions of Alkaline Particles: A Review Focusing on Completeness of the Reaction

“…Also, the activation energy for the hydrolysis reaction appears to become lower when the humidity is higher (Gray 1969(Gray , 1977. Some investigators have maintained that water molecules need to be present during accelerated aging in order to achieve a degradation process having a predictive value for natural aging (Graminski et al 1979;Wilson and Parks 1983;Shahani et al 2001). Luner (1969) urged caution in interpreting results from accelerated aging tests in general based on a concern that the mode of failure is likely to be different at elevated temperatures.…”

“…Also, as reported by Gray (1969), the presence of even a small amount of moisture (dry or 5% based on solids) can markedly decrease the activation energy associated with paper's aging. Such observations have caused several researchers to recommend that a completely dry accelerated aging test will not be a good choice to predict the (longer) process of natural aging (Graminski et al 1979;Wilson and Parks 1983;Zou et al 1996a). Because acidic paper tends to age most rapidly under humid conditions (Zou et al 1996a;Baty et al 2010;Zervos 2010), it can be argued that an ideal accelerated aging test for acidic paper ought to involve humid conditions -possibly representing the highest relative humidity that the books are likely to encounter on a frequent basis.…”

“…A possible interpretation of these findings, to the extent that they are predictive of natural aging under typical storage conditions, is that the high water content present in the air at 80 C and 65% relative humidity played an important role in bringing about unintended completion of the deacidification reaction during the test procedure. On the other hand, since different reactions may be predominant under the dry accelerated aging conditions (Graminski et al 1979;Wilson and Parks 1983;Zou et al 1996a), some researchers will not regard results from such tests as being strongly predictive of natural aging.…”

Air quality criteria for storage of paper-based archival records

“…Criteria were provided in two ways: 1) through a literature search, and 2) by a Workshop on Environmental Conditions for Archival Records Storage held at the National Bureau of Standards on January [19][20]1983 [2],…”

“…In an accelerated aging study it was clearly demonstrated that moisture has a profound effect on the degradation rate of paper, particularly at high temperatures [20].…”