Abstract
Waterlogged wooden artifacts represent an important historical legacy of our past. They are very fragile, especially due to the severe phenomenon of acidification that may occur in the presence of acid precursors. To date, a satisfactory solution for the deacidification of ancient wood on a large scale has still not been found. In this paper, we propose, for the first time, eco-friendly curative and preventive treatments using nanoparticles (NPs) of earth alkaline hydroxides dispersed in water and produced on a large scale. We present the characterization of the NPs (by X-ray diffraction, atomic-force and electron microscopy, and small-angle neutron scattering), together with the study of the deacidification efficiency of our treatments. We demonstrate that all our treatments are very effective for both curative and preventive aims, able to assure an almost neutral or slightly alkaline pH of the treated woods. Furthermore, the use of water as a solvent paves the way for large-scale and eco-friendly applications which avoid substances that are harmful for the environment and for human health.
Highlights
In the field of preservation of the cultural heritage of humanity, the conservation of waterlogged wooden artifacts is extremely important since these artifacts represent an informative but extremely rare source of knowledge
This procedure represents a versatile, sustainable and cost-effective synthetic route based on an ion-exchange process which occurs in water, at room temperature and ambient pressure, and operating with cheap or renewable reactants
From X-ray powder diffraction (XRD) investigations (Figure 4), performed on the dry powder obtained from the magnesium hydroxide (MH) and calcium hydroxide (CH) aqueous suspensions, the patterns perfectly matched the hexagonal brucite structure (ICSD #98-016-9979) and the hexagonal portlandite structure (ICSD #98-020-2220), respectively, with no secondary phases, denoting the formation of pure crystalline Mg(OH)2 or Ca(OH)2 compounds
Summary
In the field of preservation of the cultural heritage of humanity, the conservation of waterlogged wooden artifacts is extremely important since these artifacts represent an informative but extremely rare source of knowledge. In addition to the archeological and historical importance of the relict itself, the originality of this research relates to the fact that both CH and MH NPs to be used for the deacidification treatments are produced by means of an innovative and scalable synthetic procedure [26,27,28], which can give the possibility to extend the treatments on small samples and on an extensive scale This procedure represents a versatile, sustainable and cost-effective synthetic route based on an ion-exchange process which occurs in water, at room temperature and ambient pressure, and operating with cheap or renewable reactants. The present study focuses on the use of alkaline-earth hydroxide NPs, produced by the sustainable and scalable process, both for curative and, in an original way, for preventive treatments of the waterlogged wood samples containing acid precursors. In order to investigate main features of the wood samples, to analyze the structural and morphological features of the new synthesized CH and MH NPs, and to study the efficiency of the deacidifying treatments, we used several non-destructive methods, such as optical microscopy (OM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) equipped with an X-ray probe (SEM-EDX), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), X-ray powder diffraction (XRD), Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM), Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM), Small-Angle Neutron Scattering (SANS) and pH measurements
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