Heat treatment as a wood process is increasingly used because of its non-biocide behaviour and its low environmental impact. This sort of treatment is based on biopolymer chemical degradation by heat transfer. This process improves mainly the dimensional stability and the decay resistance of wood. Wood becomes darker after this type of treatment and thus gives it an aesthetic appearance. These improvements come at the expense of wood mechanical properties which are weakened. These last modifications have been subsequently extensively studied and previous researches have shown that new heat treated wood properties are correlated to heat treatment conditions and to the nature of industrial process used. Nowadays, recent works are focus on the knowledge improvement of wood thermal degradation reaction mechanisms, modelling, quality prediction and quality control. Moreover, it remains also important to develop inexpensive, fast and nondestructive industrial methods to control the process and predict heat-treated wood quality. This review therefore describes recent studies and synthesizes the major publications which have been conducted on better understanding on wood thermal modification and on the development of control and prediction ways on new feature brought to heat treated wood.

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