Permeability to water of the wood cell wall and its variation with temperature

✍ Scribed by M. Anne Palin; J. A. Petty

• Publisher: Springer
• Year: 1983
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 410 KB
• Volume: 17
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0043-7719
• DOI: 10.1007/bf00372316

✦ Synopsis

The permeability to water of the cell wall has been measured by applying a known osmotic pressure generated by PEG 6000 across wood samples containing water-swollen cell walls. In pine the void space was filled with silicone resin with the wood at near fibre saturation point. Permeability k• 1021 as defined by the Darcy equation was 37.9m 2 for longitudinal flow and 0.96 m 2 for tangential flow. Tangential permeability was also measured using water-saturated samples of spruce and lime, and allowance was made for the very high permeability of the water-filled cell cavities. The results were in satisfactory agreement with values obtained previously using wood filled with wax or resin. The variation of tangential permeability with temperature was measured over the range 10-55 ~ for pine and lime. The activation energy for flow through the cell wall was 6.8 kcal/mole for pine and 5.3 kcal/mole for lime. These values are much higher than the activation energy for viscous flow of water, presumably owing to hydrogen bonding of the water to the cell wall material.