Near infrared spectroscopy characterization of wood for value added products

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Near infrared spectroscopy (NIR) in combination with multivariate analysis (MVA)has found many applications for assessment of important properties of wood and other materials through correlation of specific wood characteristics to subtle surface chemical differences. This technology is rapid, non-destructive and requires minimal surface preparation and has the potential to predict material properties based on many complex chemical factors that would require many weeks to analyze by conventional methods. Major research objectives of our laboratories include: development of technologies to improve materials selection, processing and product performance for value added wood based products; reducing environmental impacts of pressure treated wood over all stages of its life cycle; assessing impacts of global climate change on wood chemistry; and investigating changes to wood during decay.  NIR capability in our laboratory will help to meet these objectives.  It has the ability to identify features associated with better wood quality, including species differentiation, chemical composition (important for studies on effects of global warming), mechanical properties and chemical treatments.  We believe that this instrumentation can be developed to provide us with rapid and accurate assessment of materials quality with high spatial resolution. Such a rapid detection and evaluation technique will reduce the analytical time and cost in our assessment of new processes and products and make it possible to characterize properties within individual annual rings of trees.  Once the factors affecting its ability to consistently characterize materials are known, it may be developed to serve the wood products industry as a materials selection and quality control tool enhancing the development of value added wood products by helping to ensure that suitable or even optimized materials are selected for a given process.