The Improvement of Durability of Marine Wood with Polymer and its Mechanism

Abstract

In order to improve the durability of marine wood against the long-term marine corrosion, the study explores to use two bifunctional reagents, maleic anhydride (Man) and glycidyl methacrylate(GMA), to react with wood by impregnating them into the porous structure of wood and further initiating them to polymerize with an initiator, AIBN, through a heat process. After the above modification, the durability of the marine wood treated with polymer was tested, and its mechanism was further analyzed as well. The testing results of the durability show that the acid resistance, the alkali resistance, the decay resistance against marine borers and the dimensional stability of the treated wood increases by 2.02 times, 12.39 times, 4.96 times and 3 times over untreated wood, respectively; and its Anti Swelling Efficiency (ASE) for dimensional stability reaches 53%, which almost equals the value of the wood treated by PEG-1500 under the same condition, while its leachability resistance is greatly higher than wood treated by PEG-1500. The analysis result with FTIR indicates that Man and GMA both react with wood, and Man reacts with the hydroxyl group of wood cell walls by its anhydride group, and GMA polymerizes in the porous structure of wood. The charactering result with SEM reveals that the resultant polymer fills in wood cell lumina as a solid form, which contacts tightly the wood cell walls without obvious gaps. The greatly reducing amount of hydroxyl groups after the reaction and the heavy jamming channels for water and marine borers approaching to wood cell walls both contribute to the improving durability of the modified wood.