A survey of factors affecting decay resistance of wood modified with acetic anhydride
IRG/WP 12-40594
G Alfredsen, P O Flæte, H Militz
From the range of information published, acetylation appears well suited to provide adequate protection against biological attack for materials derived from typically non-durable wood species. Acetylated wood is now commercially available both in Europe and in the USA. But still there are a lot of unanswered questions related to fungal decay mechanisms in acetylated wood. The paper summarize existing knowledge and highlight future research opportunities related to fungal deterioration of acetic anhydride modified wood. In addition statistical analyses based on previously published data were performed to quantify what factors contribute most to the performance (calculated as test sample/control). The results showed that WPG can explain approximately 50 % of the performance, measured as test sample/control (T/C), for acetic anhydride treated wood. Other of the applied variables, like wood species or type of fungus can reduce the variance in T/C by additional 15 %.
Keywords: acetylation, acetic anhydride, fungi, decay mechanisms, literature survey, prediction model