Reduction of the corrosion potential of wood for application in the museum environment

ABSTRACT

Cultural property and art objects often contain metallic or ceramic materials that can react corrosively with compounds like formic and acetic acid from the ambient air. For this reason, only materials that cannot damage the cultural property by gaseous escaping substances are used for the construction of museum showcases. Due to its chemical composition, wood is excluded as a construction material in museums.

In this study, three wood species, beech (Fagus sylvatica L), alder (Alnus), and walnut (Juglans regia), were treated with different concentrations of NaOH solutions to limit their corrosion potential to the extent that the treated wood could be used for the construction of museum display cases. The Oddy accelerated corrosion test, which has established itself as a proven test method for determining the suitability of materials in museums, offers a test method for measuring the corrosion potential of materials. The results show that all three types of wood pass the Oddy test by treatment with a 3% NaOH solution, whereas all untreated samples had to be classified as unsuitable for use in museums, as expected, according to the underlying evaluation scheme.

KEYWORDS:

• Low-emission wood
• Oddy test
• sodium hydroxide
• wood modification

Acknowledgement

The authors gratefully acknowledge the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWI) for the financial support (grant number ZF4092209TA7).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy: [Grant Number ZF4092209TA7].