Improved properties of bamboo by thermal treatment with wood wax oil

Bamboo is an environmentally friendly and sustainable building material. In addition, its high hydrophilicity and low susceptibility to fungal diseases make it widely applicable in building materials. Thus, it is highly desirable to develop a green and eco-friendly modification method to improve the properties of bamboo. Wood wax oil is a new type of environmentally friendly compound vegetable oil that has a certain permeability and film formation and can infiltrate deep into the bamboo pores. Here, impregnation with wood wax oil combined with thermal treatment was used to modify bamboo. The results show that the joint modification of bamboo by wood wax oil and heat treatment, especially the bamboo treated with wood wax oil at 180 °C, resulted in an instantaneous internal hydrophobic angle of 120° moreover, on the 20th day, there was no fungal growth at all. Additionally, the dimensional stability almost reached zero change, while the mechanical strength is greatly enhanced; in particular, the tensile strength was approximately 130 MPa, which is more than 30 MPa greater than that of the untreated or room-temperature-treated samples.