Water vapor sorption behavior of bamboo pertaining to its hierarchical structure

Bamboo is an anisotropic, hierarchical, and hygroscopic material. Moisture transport in bamboo is one of the most fundamental properties affecting almost all other physical and mechanical properties of the material. This study investigated the water vapor sorption behaviors of bamboo at various stru...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Scientific reports 2021-06, Vol.11 (1), p.12714-12714, Article 12714
Main Authors: Chen, Qi, Fang, Changhua, Wang, Ge, Ma, Xinxin, Luo, Junji, Chen, Meiling, Dai, Chunping, Fei, Benhua
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
639/301
639/301/54
639/766/189
Bamboo
Cell walls
Drying
Humanities and Social Sciences
Kinetics
Mechanical properties
Moisture content
multidisciplinary
Parenchyma
Physical properties
Science
Science (multidisciplinary)
Sorption
Water content
Water transport
Water vapor
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Summary:Bamboo is an anisotropic, hierarchical, and hygroscopic material. Moisture transport in bamboo is one of the most fundamental properties affecting almost all other physical and mechanical properties of the material. This study investigated the water vapor sorption behaviors of bamboo at various structural levels: cell walls, cells (with pits) and bamboo blocks. The specimens with two sorption directions, longitudinal (L) and transverse (T), were measured by saturated salt solution method and dynamic vapor sorption. The parallel exponential kinetics model was used to analyze the sorption kinetics. The results showed that at the cell wall level, the sorption rate and equilibrium moisture content (EMC) of cell wall in the L specimens were larger than those in the T specimens. The differences were probably caused by the looser cell wall layers in the L specimens. At the cellular scale, pits in the cell wall resulted in an enhanced sorption rate and EMC of the T specimens compared with the L specimens where the pits in the parenchyma cells were only distributed in the lateral walls but not in end walls. At the macro scale, the sorption rate and moisture content of bamboo blocks were largely controlled by the vessel cells. As a hierarchically-structured plant, bamboo performs the biological function of moisture transport at all these scales. This work helps improve the understanding of water transport behavior in bamboo, which may lead to better bamboo drying and impregnation processes.
ISSN:2045-2322
2045-2322
DOI:10.1038/s41598-021-92103-4