Sjf Sebastiaan Erich

Bound and free water distribution in wood during water uptake and drying as measured by 1D magnetic resonance imaging

Knowledge on moisture transport in wood is important for understanding its utilization, durability and product quality. Moisture transport processes in wood can be studied by Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) imaging. By combining NMR imaging with relaxometry, the state of water within wood can be identified, i.e. water bound to the cell wall, and free water in the cell lumen/vessel. This paper presents how the transport of water can be monitored and quantified in terms of bound and free water during water uptake and drying. Three types of wood from softwood to hardwood were selected covering a range of low to high density wood; pine sapwood and oak and teak. A calibration is performed to determine the different water states in each different wood type and to convert the NMR signal into moisture content. For all wood types, water transport appeared to be internally limited during both uptake and drying. In case of water uptake, free water was observed only after the cell walls were saturated with bound water. In case of drying, the loss of bound water starts only after vanishing of free water, irrespective of the position. Obviously, there is always a local thermodynamic equilibrium of bound and free water for both uptake and drying. Finally, we determined the effective diffusion coefficient (Deff). Experimentally determined diffusion constants were compared with those derived by the diffusion models for conceptual understanding of transport mechanism. We found that diffusion in the cell wall fibers plays a critical role in the transport process.

High spatial resolution NMR imaging of polymer layers on metallic substrates

High spatial resolution NMR imaging techniques have been developed recently to measure the spatial inhomogeneity of a polymer coating film. However, the substrates of the polymer coatings for such experiments are generally required to be non-metallic, because metals can interact with static magnetic fields B(0) and RF fields B(1) giving rise to artifacts in NMR images. In this paper we present a systematic study on the effects of metallic substrates on 1D profiles obtained by high resolution NMR imaging. The off-resonance effect is discussed in detail in terms of the excitation profile of the RF pulses. We quantitatively show how the NMR signal intensities change with frequency offset at different RF pulse lengths. The complete NMR profiles were simulated using a Finite Element Analysis method by fully considering the inhomogeneities in both B(1) and B(0). The excellent agreement between the calculated and measured NMR profiles on both metallic and non-metallic substrates indicates that the experimental NMR profiles can be reproduced very well by numerical simulations. The metallic substrates can disturb the RF field of the coil by eddy current effect and therefore change the NMR profiles. To quantitatively interpret the NMR profile of a polymer layer on a metallic substrate, the profile has to be divided by the profile of a reference on the same metallic substrate located at the same distance from the coil.

Transport of a water-soluble polymer during drying of a model porous media

ABSTRACT This article presents an experimental investigation on transport of methylhydroxyethylcellulose (MHEC) during drying of a model porous material. Nuclear magnetic resonance imaging and thermogravimetric analysis are used to measure water and MHEC transport, respectively. MHEC is added to glue mortars to increase open time, i.e., the time period during which tiles can be applied with sufficiently good adhesion. Previous work showed that MHEC promotes a receding front during drying and therefore leads to differences in the degree of hydration throughout the mortar sample, i.e., the top surface shows poor hydration and the bottom surface shows good hydration. In this study, we investigate the transport of MHEC during drying of a model porous material, consisting of packed glass beads saturated with an aqueous MHEC solution. At MHEC concentration less than 1.3 wt%, homogeneous drying is observed, enabling advective transport of MHEC toward the drying surface. In this case, accumulation of MHEC may form a skin at the top surface and below this skin layer, a gel zone may form, which allows migration of water toward the evaporation surface. When the MHEC concentration is above 1.3 wt%, front receding drying is observed, which prevents transport of MHEC, resulting in a more homogeneous distribution of MHEC.