WOOD RESEARCH Volume 70, Number 2, 2025
TAMAS HOFMANN, LASZLO TOLVAJ, and ZOLTAN PASZTORY

CHEMICAL CHANGES DURING WOOD CUTTING

Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris) and poplar (Populus euramericana) species were chosen for the experiments.Sawdust was made by a circular saw with a rare tooth spacing for producing bigger particles beside the fine fractions. Particles were separated by a vibration separator with the sieve sizes 1 mm, 0.63mm, 0.315 mm, 0.1 mm and 0.063 mm. Infrared reflectance spectra of the particles were measured to determine the chemical changes generated by the cutting procedure.The experimental results showed that the grinding of wood resulted in bond rupture for all ether bond types appearing in the infrared spectrum. The number of conjugated and unconjugated carbonyl groups in the wood was significantly reduced during the cutting procedure. After bond breaks, oxidation and recombination processes occurred generating compounds similar to the aromatic structure of lignin, which were shown by increases in absorption at 1514, 1271 and 1231 cm-1

WOOD RESEARCH Volume 65, Number 6, 2020
ZOLTAN PASZTORY, LASZLO TOLVAJ, and DENES VARGA

Effect of water leaching on photodegraded poplar wood monitored by IR spectroscopy

Poplar (Populus x euramericana cv. pannonia) samples were irradiated using ultraviolet light emitter mercury lamp. Other series of specimens were treated with the combination of UV radiation and water leaching. The total duration of UV radiation for both series of specimens was 20 days. The total duration of water leaching was 10 days. One cycle of the combined treatment consisted of 2-day UV radiation followed by one day water leaching. The IR measurement was carried out after both UV radiation and water leaching to monitor both effects separately. Lignin degradation of water leached samples was found to be greater than that of the solely UV treated samples. The guaiacyl and the syringyl lignin showed similar degradation properties. The unconjugated carbonyl groups generated by the photodegradation proved to be the most sensitive chemical components to leaching. As a consequence of photodegradation, two absorption bands of unconjugated carbonyl groups were grown up at 1715 and 1759 cm-1 wavenumbers. The band at 1759 cm-1 was much more sensitive to water leaching than the band at 1715 cm-1. Ten days of water leaching was long enough to remove all unconjugated carbonyls generated by the photodegradation. The water was able to leach out carbonyl groups (absorbing at 1745 cm-1) originally presented in poplar wood as well.