Tools for characterization of wood and pulp from hardwood

Use of broadleaves/hardwoods is extremely important in large parts of the world, but until recently it has not happened as much as for softwoods in industrial scale. This is probably why softwoods have been favoured in the development of measurement methods.

Innventia has worked to fill this gap, in order to offer efficient tools both for the industry, e.g. for characterisation of pulps from eucalypts, birch and for laboratory, e.g. for selection of favourable plant materials in tree improvement and for investigation of property variations within and between trees, stands and species. Measurements at different levels of detail are needed. Within the Popwood project, Innventia developed methods for the characterisation of fibres and vessel elements, both in the wood matrix and in liberated state suspended in water.

Analysis in wood has the benefit that the results can be related to the local anatomy of wood and growth processes of the tree. A system was developed to automatically generate large-scale images with microscopy resolution by stitching together hundreds of images from wood samples mounted on a motorised stage and to analyse fibres and vessels in the image. Today we use our SilviScan instrument for similar measurements.

Within the project, methods were also developed for the production of micro-pulps representing wood from different radial positions in a sample and methods to characterise the dimensions and relative numbers of fibres and vessel elements in these pulps. Today the methods have been further developed into a system for fibre and vessel element characterisation.

Innventia has worked to fill this gap, in order to offer efficient tools both for the industry, for characterisation of pulps from eucalypts, birch and for laboratory, e.g. for selection of favourable plant materials in tree improvement and for investigation of property variations within and between trees, stands and species. Measurements at different levels of detail are needed. Within the Popwood project, Innventia developed methods for the characterisation of fibres and vessel elements, both in the wood matrix and in liberated state suspended in water. The natural variability in properties of aspen clones were also analysed. These are also important as a background for genetetic selection.

Wood from Aspen