Moisture Measurement Setup for Wood Based Materials

Abstract:We are developing a novel gravimetric moisture measurement system for wood based materials. The measurement principle is based on combining the Loss on Drying (LoD) method with complementary water loss detection systems. In our setup, air flows through a sample container containing sample material from 5 g to 400 g. The sample container is placed in a thermally controlled enclosure, which can be heated up to 200 °C. The mass loss of water is studied by weighing the sample before and after heating, and by monitoring the humidity of the air exiting the sample container with a capacitive sensor. The amount of evaporated water is also studied by trapping the water from the through-passed air in a separately weighed cold trap. The material samples can be exposed to different heating cycles in order to study different binding degrees of the water. This paper presents the measurement concept and the setup.