Liquid sorption, swelling and surface energy properties of unmodified and thermally modified Scots pine heartwood after extraction

The effect of extractives removal on liquid sorption, swelling and surface energy properties of unmodified wood (UW) and thermally modified Scots pine heartwood (hW) (TMW) was studied. The extraction was performed by a Soxtec procedure with a series of solvents and the results were observed by the multicycle Wilhelmy plate method, inverse gas chromatography (IGC) and Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy. A significantly lower rate of water uptake was found for the extracted UW, compared with the unextracted one. This is due to a contamination effect in the latter case from water-soluble extractives increasing the capillary flow into the wood voids, proven by the decreased water surface tension. The swelling in water increased after extraction 1.7 and 3 times in the cases of UW and TMW, respectively. The dispersive part of the surface energy was lower for the extracted TMW compared to the other sample groups, indicating an almost complete removal of the extractives. The FTIR spectra of the extracts showed the presence of phenolic compounds but also resin acids and aliphatic compounds.

NONPERTURBATIVE DISPERSIVE SECTOR IN STRONG (QUASI-)ABELIAN FIELDS

In strong (quasi-)Abelian fields, even at the one-loop level of the coupling constant, quantum fluctuations of fermions induce an effective Lagrangian density whose imaginary (absorptive) part is purely nonperturbative and known to be responsible for the fermion–antifermion pair creation. On the other hand, the induced real (dispersive) part has perturbative and nonperturbative contributions. In the one-loop case, we argue how to separate the two contributions from each other for any strength of the field. We show numerically that the nonperturbative contributions are in general comparable with or larger than the induced perturbative ones. We arrive at qualitatively similar conclusions also for the induced energy density. Further, we investigate numerically the quasianalytic continuation of the perturbative results into the nonperturbative sector, by employing (modified) Borel–Padé. It turns out that in the case at hand, we have to integrate over renormalon singularities, but there is no renormalon ambiguity involved.