Technologies Applied to Wood Heat Treatments, a Review

Abstract

Heat treatments are carried out on the wood to modify the hygroscopic properties and its dimensional stability. This allows low-grade wood to be used in exposed applications. This document provides a systematized bibliographic review related to the available technologies that allow heat treatment of wood. For this, scientific databases were consulted where previous studies with high temperature drying were found that served as the basis for the development of technologies that are used today. Patent databases were also consulted making the systematic use of the International Patent Classification (IPC) and Cooperative Patent Classification (CPC), the most promising codes were selected according to the histogram analysis. Finally, a marked trend was observed in recent years in the study and development of heat treatments applied to different timber species.