Studies on pre-treatment by compression for wood impregnation III: effects of the solid content of low-molecular-weight phenol formaldehyde resin on the impregnation

Abstract There is increasing interests in the significant improvement of impregnation amount and efficiency in wood by the pre-treatment of compression. Thus, attention is paid to pre-treatment by compression for harder impregnation with resin because of the large viscosity and relatively large molecular weight of the resin. Low-molecular-weight phenol formaldehyde (PF) resin of solid content of 10–48% were impregnated by pre-treatment of compression at a compression ratio of 60% and 40% for poplar and Chinese fir, respectively, to systematically study the effects of solid content on the impregnation amount, weight gain percentage (WGP). In addition, the distribution of resin in wood was analyzed by profile density and was observed by confocal laser scanning microscope (CLSM), and the change of crystallinity index (CrI) of resin-impregnated wood was investigated by X-ray diffractometer. The results showed: (1) compared with immersion impregnation without compression, the impregnation by pre-treatment of compression, was much larger in amount and higher in efficiency for resins in all solid contents. In a solid content range of 10–48% and at a molecular weight of about 517, there was no significant difference of impregnation amount by compression among the resins at different solid content. (2) The WGP of poplar and Chinese fir increased with the increase of resin solid content. When the resin solid content increased from 10 to 48%, the WGP increased from 8.9 to 44.2% and from 5.2 to 24.9% for poplar and Chinese fir, respectively. (3) Resin is mainly distributed in vessels and tracheids despite a few being distributed in the fiber near the longitudinal end of the poplar specimens. With the increase of solid content, the resin distribution gradually changed from diffusing on the wall to depositing in the vessel or tracheid, while the resin distribution evenness along the longitudinal direction decreased. There was more resin deposited near the longitudinal end of Chinese fir at deeper depth than that of poplar. (4) The resin can be impregnated into the amorphous area of wood without causing any change in the crystallization area. The CrI decreases with the increase of resin solid content. After all, it is concluded that the pre-treatment by compression for wood impregnation with low-molecular-weight PF resin is effective for all the solid contents for both poplar and Chinese fir. The WGP increased with the increase of resin solid content, despite the decrease of evenness of resin distribution at high solid content.