Review of Functional Treatments for Modified Wood

Wood modification is now widely recognized as offering enhanced properties of wood and overcoming issues such as dimensional instability and biodegradability which affect natural wood. Typical wood modification systems use chemical modification, impregnation modification or thermal modification, and these vary in the properties achieved. As control and understanding of the wood modification systems has progressed, further opportunities have arisen to add extra functionalities to the modified wood. These include UV stabilisation, fire retardancy, or enhanced suitability for paints and coatings. Thus, wood may become a multi-functional material through a series of modifications, treatments or reactions, to create a high-performance material with previously impossible properties. In this paper we review systems that combine the well-established wood modification procedures with secondary techniques or modifications to deliver emerging technologies with multi-functionality. The new applications targeted using this additional functionality are diverse and range from increased electrical conductivity, creation of sensors or responsive materials, improvement of wellbeing in the built environment, and enhanced fire and flame protection. We identified two parallel and connected themes: (1) the functionalisation of modified timber and (2) the modification of timber to provide (multi)-functionality. A wide range of nanotechnology concepts have been harnessed by this new generation of wood modifications and wood treatments. As this field is rapidly expanding, we also include within the review trends from current research in order to gauge the state of the art, and likely direction of travel of the industry.

Removal of ammonia and hydrogen sulfide from livestock farm by copper modified activated carbon

<p>Ammonia (NH3) and hydrogen sulfide (H2S), as the main odorous substances in waste gas from livestock farm, have attracted more attentions rescently since their adverse effects. To remove NH3 and H2S efficiently, high-pressure hydrothermal modification (HPHM), metal salt solution impregnation modification (MSIM), and HPHM combined with MSIM are used to modify the activated carbon (AC). Meanwhile, the pore structure and surface functional groups of AC and MAC absorbents are characterized by BET, FTIR and Boehm titration method. The adsorption performance of activated carbon (AC) and modified activated carbon (MAC) are compared. The effects of modification and operation conditions on the adsorption performance of MAC for NH3 and H2S are studied in detail. It was found that the optimal adsorption performance of MAC can be achieved by high-pressure hydrothermal modification (HPHM) followed by the metal salt solution impregnation modification (MSIM). With gas space velocity of 900 h-1 and total inlet concentration of 550-650 mg m-3 at 50 oC, the adsorption capacities of NH3 and H2S of GS270CuCl6010 are 24.17 mg g-1 and 26.20 mg g-1, respectively. The adsorption of NH3 and H2S by MAC is the result of both physical adsorption and chemical adsorption.</p>

Preparation and Properties of Chitosan/Graphene Modified Bamboo Fiber Fabrics

Chitosan (CS) and graphene (Gr) were used to modify bamboo fiber fabrics to develop new bamboo fiber fabrics (CGBFs) with antimicrobial properties. The CGBFs were prepared by chemical crosslinking with CS as binder assistant and Gr as functional finishing agent. The method of firmly attaching the CS/Gr to bamboo fiber fabrics was explored. On the basis of the constant amount of CS, the best impregnation modification scheme was determined by changing the amount of Gr and evaluating the properties of the CS/Gr modified bamboo fiber fabrics. The results showed that the antibacterial rate of CGBFs with 0.3 wt% Gr was more than 99%, and compared with the control sample, the maximum tensile strength of CGBF increased by 1% in the longitudinal direction and 7.8% in the weft direction. The elongation at break increased by 2.2% in longitude and 57.3% in latitude. After 20 times of washing with WOB (without optical brightener) detergent solution, the antimicrobial rate can still be more than 70%. Therefore, these newly CS/Gr modified bamboo fiber fabrics hold great promise for antibacterial application in home decoration and clothing textiles.