This special issue of the International Wood Products Journal contains selected papers from the Sixth European Conference on Wood Modification (ECMW), held at Ljubljana in Slovenia in September 2012. The series of ECWM conferences started with the first conference in Ghent in April 2003, which was an output from an E.U. Fifth Framework funded Thematic Network entitled ‘Wood Modification, the novel base providing materials with superior properties without toxic residue’. Following on from that inaugural conference, subsequent conferences were held in Göttingen, Cardiff, Stockholm and Riga.
Commercial activities in this area have increased substantially, with continuing increases in the volumes of thermally modified wood worldwide, the commercial production of acetylated wood and impregnation modified wood. Research activity has also increased over the past decade. Despite this recent interest, the history of wood modification is a long one, going back over a century in the case of thermal modification. A great deal of pioneering work was performed in the USA in the Forest Products Laboratory. Recent emphasis on the environmental credentials of timber products, combined with a greater understanding of chemical engineering processes related to wood modification has led to a resurgence of interest in this area.
An essential aspect of modified wood is that it should use benign means of preventing attack by biological organisms and that furthermore, it should not yield toxic residues when disposed on at the end of product life. The large number of papers presented at the conference represents the huge interest in the area. For the first time it was not possible to produce a paper-based version of the proceedings. The work presented in the special edition represents a small selection from the many interesting papers submitted to ECWM6. In making a selection, it was considered important to cover all aspects of wood modification and at the same time keep the size of this special issue manageable! What is presented here is very much the ‘tip of the iceberg’. Short synopses of articles in this issue can be found on pages 131–135 or downloaded from online journal page.
Callum Hill (JCH Industrial Ecology Limited)
Dennis Jones (SP Technical Research Institute of Sweden)