Study on Compressed Wood with Urea-Formaldehyde Prepolymer

Abstract

In this research, the urea-formaldehyde prepolymer and multilayer hot-press drying was used to obtain modified wood. The timbers were compressed and dried by the multilayer hot-press drying kiln. The combination of chemical modification and hot-press drying can improve the drying rate, which can also enhanced the physical and mechanical properties. Based on the findings, the basic density of modified wood improved 25.2 %, the bending strength and the bend elastic modulus improved 15.6 % and 25.0 % respectively. The dimensional stability of the treatment appeared to be slightly higher than that of untreated samples under the same conditions for processing temperatures and times. The improving dimensional stability of wood mainly was attributed to the prepolymer that changes wood cell wall components such as the degradation of the hemicelluloses and cellulose during hot-press drying treatment. The XRD results indicated that the degree of crystallinity increased to 35.45 %from 31.25 %. The TGA results show that the degradation of the samples can be divided into two step, both of the maximum weight loss velocity temperature of the two step increased to 266 °C, 355 °C from 244 °C and 341 °C.