Near infrared spectroscopy characterization of wood for value added products

近红外光谱(NIR)与多元分析(MVA)相结合，通过将特定的木材特征与细微的表面化学差异相关联，在评估木材和其他材料的重要性质方面得到了许多应用。这项技术快速、无损，只需最少的表面处理，并有可能根据许多复杂的化学因素预测材料性能，而用传统方法分析这些因素需要数周时间。我们实验室的主要研究目标包括：开发技术以改善高附加值木材产品的材料选择、加工和产品性能；减少压力处理木材在其生命周期的所有阶段对环境的影响；评估全球气候变化对木材化学的影响；并研究木材在腐烂过程中的变化。我们实验室的近红外能力将有助于实现这些目标。它有能力识别与更好的木材质量相关的特征，包括物种分化、化学成分(对研究全球变暖的影响很重要)、机械性能和化学处理。我们相信，这种仪器可以开发出来，以高空间分辨率为我们提供快速、准确的材料质量评估。这种快速检测和评估技术将减少我们评估新工艺和产品的分析时间和成本，并使其能够表征单个年轮内的特性。一旦了解了影响其一致表征材料能力的因素，它可能被开发为木制品行业的材料选择和质量控制工具，通过帮助确保为给定的工艺选择合适的甚至优化的材料来促进增值木制品的开发。

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.