Thermal Wood

[Night Raider]

Does anyone know anything about thermal wood?  I was told they can take spruce and basically heat it to alter the cell structure so bacteria can't grow and then it ages like cedar for a fraction of the price.
I just heard about this sounds a bit fishy, Anyone know about this?

[PineNut]

I have heard about it. Has to be heated to about 500 F. Also steam is injected into the chamber to control the humidity at certain stages in the process. Then special cool down with humidity control. Not something easy to do unless you are set up for it. The price is about twice that of treated yellow pine.

[Den Socling]

Our Russian friend, Sergey, has offered information at this forum a couple times. His "English" is a little hard to follow but he is an expert on thermal wood.

[serg]

Hello friends!
Dan, thanks for kmplement!
Thermo tree has excellent quality from rot ipleseni. Well behaved in the sauna door, kitchen fsad. Good Stracht domaiz thermo pine at sea.
I came from Ukraine. On the Black Sea to do this job.
Thermo pine diameter of 120 - 80 mm.


Thermo Beech kitchen



Thermo birch sauna door

Sergey

[serg]

About temperatures. Operating temperature of Fahrenheit 300 - 375. 500 F is not applied.
Sergey

[Night Raider]

Thanks Serg,
Where can I find this type of wood? it doesn't sound like something I can do myself and I haven't seen it at home depot.  Although I'll try anything once.

[Night Raider]

Sergey,
One more question, why use thermal beech for kitchen cabinets, I can see for a sauna door or any outdoor exposure.  I originally saw it on TV, spruce used for a fence.

Thanks

[serg]

Night Raider, zdavstvuy!
I think that the thermal timber, the company sells.
www.armstrong.com
Kitchen extreme room for wood, warm - humid - cold. Wood hygroscopic facade teryat their geometry. Thermo solves this problem. Resistance moisture 4.8% annual exploitation of timber. The color changes throughout the thickness, paints, pigments not. Photo color beech, oak, pine natural after thermal, varnish, wax, sealant, no. No insects, larvae, they are burned, there is no food for insects. Thermo timber behaves bravely in the open air. Requires protection from ultraviolet rays.
oak

beech


pine "AVATAR" :D format 3D

Sergey

[Den Socling]

Sergey,

You are right about figured wood. I have bought "scrap" from pallet shops, dried and planed it and taken it back to show the guys what they were wasting. They called it 3D wood.

Den

[serg]

Den hi!
Thermo wood future. This is well written on the site.
www.superiorthermowood.com
Sergey

[dundee]

If you Google Finnish Thermowood Association you will get a understanding of the technology---I had these folk here in New Zealand last year.

Pan Pac Forest Products Ltd here in Napier (NZ) have installed a pilot plant for testing

Richard

[serg]

Richard
I know in New Zealand a lot of pine. It requires protection from mold, insects. Chemical treatment of eclogite bad. The correct course of protection technology pines thermowood. With help thermowood New Zealand has a new, perfect product thermo pine. I have previously written that did samples from New Zealand pine. For quality termodereo must have a residual moisture content of 6% - 7%. Finnish technology has the function to carry out only the terms. Drying takes place in other cells, this leads to a very expensive product thermowood. So I taught her a vacuum drying chamber drying qualitatively Russian, African and American Forest and then taught her how to carry out the terms. Two technologies in one setting with a different load capacity of 4 m3 to 25 m3.
Sergey.

[ljmathias]

Serg: love this thread and really would like to know more, but for the life of me, I have no idea what you just said, or meant to say.  Two terms?  Help?

Lj

[serg]

ljmathias
I try to say this again, with human assistance, not with messy auto translator. There is a lot of pine in New Zealand. This sort of pine is soft and porous, not like in Siberia. That made New Zealand pine easy meat for the bugs and fungi. To fight these chemicals must be applied, what make effects on health and ecology. Thermo treatment is the safe alternative, where the clean process based on high temperature in oxygen free environment.  The wood gains some new features what means benefits. Wood change the color all dimension through, what provide advantage with white scratches compare to tint. The only coating with UV filter natural wax required. Wood sugars were decomposed, as well as molecular level transformation provides with water repellence,  all these make wood not be recognized as a food by biological microorganisms. Average annum humidity of the wood is 4.8% what makes advantage for goods in areas like sea shores, SPA and sauna. Flooring with no splits, doors are swellproof, stairs don't creak. Thermowood equipment is expensive. I produce small capacity 1.5-4m3 chambers for farmers, and industrial type of 25m3 lumber per load.  Farmer be able to mill 2-3m3 and put lumber in my vacuum kiln. As soon as lumber has been dried he just turns it thermo treatment mode with no reload. I have combined two technologies in one unit.

Russian company which sells products thermo birch in Canada.
http://www.ava-company.com/?id=86&cat=74
Sergey

[ljmathias]

Sergey: thanks so much for your explanation.  I think I have it now.  Sounds like the cost is still pretty high, though, unless the markets develop more for the products... guess I'll take the wait-and-see approach since there's a bunch of other equipment I need first (like a high end planer and maybe a molder-shaper for siding and flooring).

Lj

[Den Socling]

I was talking to a salesman the other day and noticed thermal wood on his business card. He said he didn't actually have it yet because the company who has promised to supply it has had trouble getting the system running properly. I guess it is still on a learning curve in the US.

[serg]

Den hello!
Firm
http://ava-company.com/?id=129
The U.S. has a certificate. It may have a different need?
Since that time I made a new schedule for drying timber diameter of 90 - 170 mm. Drying from 56% to 6% moisture content = 96 hours + 24 hours thermo 347 F. The entire process took 120 hours. Quality watch. It is interesting to understand, to know your opinion?
Sergey.

[Den Socling]

Sergey,

What does "quality watch" mean? Does it mean that you are checking those logs and the quality is good? Getting a log down to 6% in 4 days is remarkable in itself. Doing the entire process in 5 days is amazing. If the quality is good, you have a good idea. It sure saves a lot of handling. Combining vacuum drying with heat treating is what you are doing, right?

Den

[serg]

Dan,
Thanks for question! I´ve done such a cycle for second time. The quality is good, in terms of checks or splits. Now I´m going to build log house, bathhouse with sauna, arbor or pavilion and others. I publish some photos here in 10 days or so. Yes, I have succesfuly combined both in one unit - vacuum drying and thermotreatment. Everything performs quite well. For log drying I've implemented absolutely new method and drying schedule.
Sergei

[serg]

Hello friends!
I am a business trip in Ukraine. Makes the design wooden construction of cheap small diameter logs. Made a few samples for testing. Crimean Peninsula is washed by the Black Sea, many sandy beaches on which to build a metal and concrete is a big problem. Wooden houses a good alternative, lightweight, quick installation of conservation ecology. Thermo wood tolerates aggressive air moist sea.
Sergey

[Buck]

Serg, does this only apply to logs or will it work on lumber? Reminds me of the process we used for creosote treatment of utility poles.(similar) That process didnt work as well on lumber and I dont recall the temperature of the process.

[serg]

Buck hi!
I know the technology creosote impregnated timber, my opinion is that this technology in the past. I work from installations to soak the logs in the installation of thermowood - ecological purity and 10 Punt to the top of a usually dry wood.
The beauty of wood, the color changes throughout the thickness of the board
The stability of geometry
No insects
Stability absorb moisture from the air
No cracks in the floor board
Increases the hardness of wood
Drying of timber and heat is different from the drying timber with thermo. I can do different colors of wood playing temperature. See photos of the new graphics. Each species of wood has its own color.
Sergey.
V = 15 m3

V = 8 m3

Two cameras to 26 m3

Oak , ash ,bttch not thermo

Oak , ash ,bttch  thermo color natur

birch

aspen

poplar

alder

abasha

[Buck]

Nice!

[serg]

Russian Siberia.  Mini sauna from thermo  pine, a deck Siberian thermo  larch.
It not Miami - rest is possible :D.
Sergey

[Buck]

  Really nice!

[serg]

Hello, friends!
I worked on the project "Termovak -25" for two years and completed it. I can dry the wood from moisture 60% and instantly dry wood to heat treatment. In the month of a 100 m3 of roundwood or 4 baths.


Sergey

[StephenRice]

Sergey,

In your pictures, I first noticed the picture with the pine logs.  In that picture, I also noticed a tower near the other end of the drying tube with a conveyor running to it.  So then, I started to think that, somewhere out of the picture frame, there may have been a cyclone biomass burner or other type of furnace supplying heat to these chambers.  But, I did not see an exit vent for the heat. 

Then in some of the other chambers, it appeared that the chambers utilized a vacuum or other type of pressure lid or cap.  So, are these vacuum chambers?  Or, are they heating chambers?  Since I did not notice any sort of steam or water jackets on the tubes, I wonder how it could be both. 

I am just trying to figure out how the heat is applied to break down the cellulosic wall structures and the sugars without destroying the structure of the wood itself.  I have an acquaintance that has pioneered an acid hydrolysis process to extract ethanol from cellulosic waste, but I believe his output materials amount to nearly useless sludge.  Also, others use thermal gasification, but that leaves nothing resembling lumber either. 

That leaves me to wonder if this thermal wood project is a pyrolysis process where you or others are using vacuum to remove oxygen from the chambers while somehow heating them up considerably in order to prevent the oxidation or burning of the wood? That would kill any wood-destroying microorganisms as well as possibly thermally induce a chemical reaction to the sugars in the wood.  Am I understanding your process fairly accurately then?

[serg]

StephenRice
Yes, you understand my procces correctly.
Sergey

[StephenRice]

I was thinking some more, and a simple vacuum could not remove enough oxygen from the chambers, could it?  Do you inject nitrogen, argon, or some other inert gas to displace the oxygen in the internal chamber atmosphere?  Also, how is the heat introduced to the vacuum chambers?

[Den Socling]

Stephen,

A liquid ring vacuum pump can remove enough oxygen to eliminate burning. And Sergey has a design that uses pipes on the inside and a condenser top center that produces convection. At least that is the setup he uses for his vacuum kilns.

Den

[StephenRice]

Stephen,

A liquid ring vacuum pump can remove enough oxygen to eliminate burning. And Sergey has a design that uses pipes on the inside and a condenser top center that produces convection. At least that is the setup he uses for his vacuum kilns.

Den

I have been doing some more research and it seems that much of the thermal wood modification that is being done commercially now is using nitrogen to help displace the oxygen in the vacuum chambers.  Not positive about Sergey's setup though.

Also, is not the condenser that is on top of the vacuum chamber used to condense the water vapor that is drawn out of the wood  for the purpose of pumping it out and preventing the vapor from re-entering the chamber and not for heating?  That is what the schematics I have seen online last night have shown.  Again, not sure exactly in regards to Sergey's rig.

Also, it seems that most of the commercial thermal wood modification rigs use at least a 2-3 step process, some 4 step.  One of those steps was to rehydrate the wood to a usable level with steam.  Some of the companies used the water previously removed from the wood to rehydrate the lumber.

Another thing that I learned last night was that much of the thermal wood from dry processes tended to not hold paint as well afterward.  However, there is a different style of thermal wood modification that heats the wood up in an oil bath.  The resulting wood lost less pliability than the other thermally modified wood and it held paint much better afterwards.  Has anyone here seen or know anything about that process?  It seemed very simple, quite honestly.

[ljmathias]

Wow! That oil bath heat treatment goes by another name here in the Deep South: deep fried turkeys (or chickens, or ducks or worst of all, a turducken).  Real hot oil, through in what you want to cook- if the oil is hot enough, it seals the outside and prevents oil from getting in- no greasy aftertaste.

See, we did turn this thread to food finally.  I was wondering what was wrong with you all@

;D

Lj

[StephenRice]

Yeah, I was thinking the same thing!  But, believe it or not, they basically cook the wood in an oil bath of rapeseed (canola) oil, sunflower oil, or linseed oil at a temperature of 380 to 450 degrees Fahrenheit for 2-4 hours.  The oil itself shields the wood from oxygen, the heat crystalizes the lignin, cellulose, and hemi-cellulose, killing all wood-eating microorganisms, releasing the sugar alcohols, and sealing the cellular structures by swelling the cell walls and thus protecting against further attack.

No vacuum is needed, and the water based acrylic finishes will stick to the wood treated this way even better than to wood modified in heated vacuum chambers.

[serg]

Den.
Thank you for your understanding of the process.
I do not use gas, I have a pair of tree it is a protective environment from burning. I am working up to 180 - 190 grams with the rest used a temperature above 230 g S. Wood is black. I can do a different color using the high wood moisture and temperature. From light to black.
Without the quality of drying is not the quality of thermo! All use the term with separate drying chambers. Example of oak can be dried thickness of 52 mm 60-90 days in vacuum 20 - 28 days and in the same cell to the terms. Installed power 250 kW of competitors on the volume of 6 m3 boot my installation of thermal capacity of 12 m3 with a 18 kW. Price competition 250 000 $ 6 m3 separate dryer convective price 65 000 $, my installation of 12 m3 is two times cheaper than thermal vacuum drying of two technologies in one.
See other technologies. Each technology has its thermal life.
www.thermowood.fi
www.thermory.com
www.platowood.nl
www.retiwood.com
www.menz-holz.de
www.mirako.at
www.vacuums.ru
www.termoderevo.ru
I made a conclusion - the future of thermowood!

Thermo oak, beech, acacia, ash. Beautiful! Make protection from ultraviolet and parquet eternal.

Sergey

[serg]

I did experience the pine logs and the usual terms. Normal logs of pine covered with mold and fungus. Thermo log nothing, the geometry is stable. Waste thermal pine went for firewood.
The experience made from May to September 2010.
Sergey.

[serg]

Hello!
I made a new schedule for drying thermal timber diameter of 250 - 280 mm period of 240 hours W= 4 %. Sawed timber, logs for the house.
Sergey