Wood modification based on furfuryl alcohol improves several important wood properties, such as the resistance to fungal decay and insect attack, hardness, dimensional stability, bending strength and stiffness. The improvements of wood properties depend on the weight percent gain (WPG) due to furfurylation. Fourier transform near infrared (FT-NIR) spectroscopy was used to calibrate PLS-regression models for prediction of WPG due to furfurylation in birch wood. Spectra were obtained in cross-sections of solid wood. A PLS-regression model based on wood samples with WPG ranging from 16.7 to 35.1%, performed well when validated on a separate test set. The coefficient of determination between laboratory measured WPG and predicted WPG was high (R2 = 0.87). The prediction error given by the root mean square error of prediction was low (RMSEP = 1.23). The results showed that the technique should be considered a prospective tool for quality assessment of furfurylated wood.

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