WOOD PRESERVATION: THE LATEST DEVELOPMENT IN RESEARCH
Salamah S. and Salmiah U.
Forest Research Institute Malaysia, Kepong 52109, Selangor, Malaysia
Email: [email protected]
New developments in wood preservation have been mainly in the area of new preservatives. The selection of wood preservatives, formulations, and treatment methods are dependent on the product and type of protection required. Dipping or spraying is for temporary or short-term protection and pressure processes are for longer term protection.
Bio-deterioration of wood products by micro-organisms and insects is a major problem inducing commercial wood preservative formulations to contain chemicals toxic to micro-organisms and insects. In order to be commercially viable wood preservatives, chemical formulations should be cost effective, have good permanence in the wood, no significant effect on the strength properties of wood, low corrosivity to metal fasteners, good penetration properties and safe to handle and use.
Three types of wood preservative are available globally; oil-, water- and light organic solvent-based preservatives with water-based preservatives as the most popular world wide. Copper-chrome-arsenate (CCA), a water based preservative is the most important wood preservative and widely used for timber in construction work and outdoor application including some light organic solvent based preservatives followed by boron based compound for indoor application.
The current trend in the development of wood preservatives is to use biocide combinations which include both inorganic-organic and organic-organic binary mixtures. Another approach to wood preservation is by the chemical modification method. Existing Malaysian Standards have been revised lately to comply with the latest requirements of the timber based industries and government regulations which include the new treatment process, product specification, preservative formulation and quality control. These standards are being coordinated by the Malaysian Wood Preserving Association as Standard Writing Organization for wood preservation.
This research was presented at the CFFPR 2007 Meeting. For more information on FRIM and the CFFPR Meeting, please contact Dr Mohd. Nor Mohd. Yusoff, Senior Director, Forest Products Division, Forest Research Institute Malaysia (FRIM). Email: [email protected]
