Commonly used agents for waterlogged wood consolidation (including the most popular polyethylene glycol) have proved ineffective and even dangerous to the preserved objects, jeopardising their integrity. Finding new, effective alternatives for safe preservation of wooden cultural heritage is therefore of key importance. The future conservation agents should, first and foremost, provide the integrity and dimensional stability of wooden artefacts and protect them against biological degradation. They should also be chemically and mechanically stable and show enhanced compatibility with wooden objects with no detectable side effects while being cheap, renewable, and environmentally friendly. Due to their unique attributes (e.g. excellent mechanical properties, biocompatibility, antifungal properties, unique chemical reactivity, hydrophobicity), nanocellulose and some organosilicon derivatives were used for the study to check their potential as consolidants for the conservation of waterlogged wooden artefacts. Their influence on the dimensional stability of archaeological waterlogged elm wood excavated from the bottom of the Lednica Lake in the Wielkopolska Region was determined. The results clearly show that nanocellulose suspension applied alone is not effective in wood stabilisation due to poor penetration of wood structure. In turn, some organosilicons have a great potential for stabilisation of waterlogged wood dimensions. Four out of eight tested derivatives demonstrated anti-shrink efficiency above 90%, while one of them reached as much as 99.36%. This makes the organosilicon derivatives promising wood consolidants, potentially useful in wood conservation practise. Therefore, further study on their physical, chemical and mechanical properties will be undertaken.

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