Heat treatment of bamboo by Oriental Home ©

In many tropical and subtropical countries bamboo is available in suitable dimensions for a reasonable price.
Because Bamboo is fast growing material and have good mechanical propertiesm easy can used for many purposes, buildings material, flooring decorations, structural material, home decor like table bamboo lamps.

However, bamboo is known as common to fungal or insect attack and it is difficult to treat with preservatives subsequently a heat treatment of bamboo must be used.
Asian grown bamboo can be heat treated to improve mechanical properties. The durability of treated specimens against soft rot fungi usually is tested. After treatment you will find changes of the mechanical in bamboo.

Heating bamboo to temperatures above 200°C cause a clearly enhanced durability against a basidiomycete as well as against a soft rot attack but the shock resistance reduce. It is well known from bamboo that it is a cheep and fast growing material with well mechanical properties. A heat treatment of bamboo seemed to be a suitable method which has the advantage to be non toxic and which does not need chemicals..

Bamboo is very susceptible to mould and blue stain infestions. Therefore it is very difficult to transport untreated bamboo from Asia to Europe without any pre-infestations by fungi. However, a preinfection with moulds or blue stain would strongly influence the test results of the planned basidiomycete tests. Due to the same reason a bamboo preservation by chemicals was impossible too. Preparation of the specimens and treatment method

Prior to the heat treatment, the nodes of the bamboo culms were removed, the internodes were split into stripes of about 1 cm in width and cut to pieces of 4 cm in length. In a test specimens of P. viridiglaucescens were treated at 180°C, 200°C and 220°C for 30 min, 60 min and 120 min (real treatment time at nominal temperature) in hot hemp seed oil. The specimens were inserted in hot oil and the real treatment time started when the oil bath reached the target temperature again.

Bamboo was successfully protected against fungal attack by the oil-bath treatment. Although soft rot was judged as the more important fungal decay type for untreated bamboo in practice, these fungi were not the dominant destroyers for oil-bath treated bamboo. In general it can be summarised that bamboo can be prevented successfully from fungal attack by a heat treatment in an oil-bath but also that severe losses in strength have to be expected. Therefore the heat treated bamboo may not to be suitable for load bearing constructions, but surly is acceptable for any internal finishes as well very good for any kind of decorations.

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Ref extract from: The International Research Group On Wood Preservation. Hamburg, Germany