Exploring Property Changes in Pine Wood by Impregnating it with Different Concentrations of Phenolic Resin

Douglas Beal, Forrest Schultz, John KirkUniversity of Wisconsin – Stout, Menomonie, WI 54751

BACKGROUND

•Pine is a very soft ductile wood which doesn’t make it very susceptible for applications such as: construction trusses and flooring. Pine wood is very porous with some pores spanning over 50µm. The width of a strand of human hair ranges from 70-100µm as a comparison. Therefore, why not find a type of resin to fill these gaps, ultimately increasing the hardness and strength of the wood. Phenolic resin (phenol formaldehyde resin) could be beneficial for this application process. The resin is a cross-linking resin, which when cured may increase the hardness and strength of the wood.

PURPOSE AND HYPOTHESIS

•Phenolic resin is a thermosetting material that is resistant to chemicals, moisture, impact and heat; making it an ideal solution for applications using steel, wood and plastic.

• I predicted that the thermosetting polymer will improve the woods structural integrity, but the downfall will be determine how much the porous pine actually absorbs through the absorption and curing process

MATERIALS AND METHODS

•This project will use ASTM standard blocks of wood with dimensions of (2”x2”x6”) impregnated with phenolic resin.

•Before conducting the experiment, I needed to find what concentrations of the phenolic resin is needed to conduct this experiment. I found the linear standard curve of the absorption vs. concentration using different resin dilutions to find certain concentrations to conduct in the experiment. To find the absorption, I used the UV-Visual Spectroscope.

•After finding the concentrations needed, I had to make a tank to hold the concentrated solution along with a small weight to keep the small wood block submerged.

•Each block is submerged in the solution for two hours then laid out to cure for twenty-four hours

•To see Nano-characteristics of the wood each sample needed special care to not destroy or skew the surface. This was done by carefully shaving off one millimeter by one millimeter block without touching the surface to be viewed by the SEM.

•Exploring how the resin fills these pours will be done with a Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM). These effects will be analyzed to verify if and how the resin penetrates the wood.

RESULTS

•The results from this experiment are inconclusive at this point in the project. To actually see if the wood is structurally stronger more tests need to be conducted including: Janka Wood hardness test, tension and compression tests.

•These tests will be conducted further on in the semester.

•At this point, I have found the concentrations needed to pursue this experiment further. Next step is to use various cross sectional sizes of wood to see exactly how much and how far the phenolic Resin actually penetrates the wood.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I would like to acknowledge the following individuals for their assistance towards this project:•Dr. Forrest Schultz•Dr. John Kirk •Zach Delong (Classmate)

REFERENCES

"phenol-formaldehyde resin." www.britannica.com. Web. 3 Apr 2011. <http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/455534/phenol-formaldehyde-resin>.Schultz, Forrest. Chemistry Department. Interview by Douglas Beal. 3/20/2011. Print. 3 Apr 2011.

Below are examples of pine treated with Phenolic Resin. As you can see there is a small difference with the cell wall texture