New Solutions
From the beginning, Superior Thermowood has set high standards for itself, creating a flexible process that addresses inherent characteristics and problems specific to the species being treated, while ensuring that an identical process could be repeated again and again in actual production scenarios. But with a flexibility that allows customization for specialized results, like achieving specific humidity levels and dramatic aesthetic effects, including control over the finish and the color of the wood itself.
Heat treating wood to alter its physical properties has been utilized for centuries in various ways, with varying degrees of success. The most common application today is the use of traditional kilns in the basic drying of cut lumber, but heat is also used in other ways as part of the finishing and processing of milled wood stock.
Better Science through Technology
Temperature has a direct effect on wood’s chemical composition and its physical properties. The extreme temperatures utilized in the Superior Thermowood process turns out a product that is unique, measurably consistent, stable, and commercially desirable. It is also an environmentally sound process and product.
Superior Thermowood’s process is based on a patented, state-of-the-art “furnace” chamber, powered by its own heat source designed to achieve, maintain and control the high temperatures required. Extremely hot air is routed within the chamber and circulated in a controlled configuration, around and through the racked wood to ensure equalized heating. The wood in the chamber is then cooled in an equally controlled method.
The process alters the fundamental cell structure of the wood, modifying the sugars that rot fungi feeds on, to such a degree that the bacteria cannot attach itself to it. At the same time naturally occurring protective agents are redistributed throughout the wood, further contributing to this rot resistance.
Heat treating causes a substantial decrease in the hydroxyl groups, slowing moisture uptake as the cell wall is able to absorb less water. This results in a 50-90% reduction in the dimensional shrinking or swelling of the finished product. Overall the reduction of the equilibrium moisture content of wood is cut by as much as 50%. Laboratory testing shows that bacterial resistance is greatly improved through the correct combination of temperature and duration.
Monitors for temperature and humidity are positioned inside the furnace chamber to monitor the temperature and moisture content of both the air and wood. The physical status of the material being treated can be monitored in the control center via a live feed from the unit itself. Information from each treatment is collected and stored in the database, to ensure that the process can be matched and reproduced time and time again, to produce a consistent product in sustainable quantities.
