Treatment of wood-based panel products with volatile borate

The paper presents recent developments in the use of volatile borate esters for the preservative treatment of wood based board materials. Several advances on previous reports are discussed. In laboratory studies, treatment times of approximately ten minutes at 20°C on boards at equilibrium moisture content provided full penetration and retentions of 1% wt/wt boric acid. Biological tests have been conducted on a wide variety of boards treated by the vapour boron method. In all cases a retention of 0.7% wt/wt boric acid gave complete protection from decay. These results are considered with regard to parallel studies on solid wood by colleagues at the Forest Research Institute, Rotorua. The advantages of vapour boron treatment for wood based board materials are discussed.