Wood Does Not Melt

Name: Saif
Status: Other
Age: 20s
Location: N/A
Country: N/A
Date: June 2004

Question:

Why does wood NOT melt? 

Replies:

To melt something would imply that it can be taken between a liquid

and solid state by heating and cooling. Wood, like other plant
material, is very complex and takes its form from its cellular structure.
In its natural state, wood is roughly 1/4 to 2/3 water by weight, so it
consists of large amounts of liquid at room temperature to begin with.
Wood is the source of many liquid products, such as latex rubber,
turpentine, and maple syrup, to name a very few. It is possible to
burn wood and condense the smoke into a liquid (which is actually
how "liquid smoke" food seasoning is made), but the physical
structure of the wood is destroyed in the process and the resulting
material cannot be reconstituted back into the original source. 

Andy Johnson 

Wood does not melt when the temperature is raised because it

decomposes chemically first. That is, the chemical bonds that hold it
together come apart first. Also, when wood is heated in air, it (or its
components) start to oxidize.

Materials like water, metal, or rock are simple structures that do not
go through any large changes when they are heated. These
materials usually melt. When metals are heated, he atoms usually
reorder themselves into a new arrangement at higher temperatures,
but then the new arrangement melts. Materials like wood, paper,
concrete, are not simple, and some of the chemical bonds essentially
fall apart or reorganize. In concrete, the calcium hydroxide
decomposes, and the concrete loses strength. Many plastic or
polymer materials will melt before they decompose. Some
decompose before they melt. Rocks, on the other hand, will often
melt. 

Bob Erck 

Wood is cellulose, which is a larger, longer molecule whose

approximate formula is H-(HCOH)n-H. The OH's in this formula link
to each other (bridging from molecule to molecule) more strongly
than almost any other "functional group". These "hydrogen bonds"
are weaker than the covalent bonds within each molecule, but not by
a huge factor. When there are more hydrogen bonds in each
molecule, it gets difficult to ever free each molecule enough to move
around as they do in liquids. 

Listing members of this family from smallest to largest:

n=1: methanol, melting point = -94 degreesC
n=2: ethylene glycol (anti-freeze), mp= -12C
n=3: glycerin, mp= 20 degC
n=6: glucose sugar, mp=90-150C
n=12: sucrose sugar, mp=~185C (and it tries to turn brown while
you're melting it)
n=18+: starch mp>200C, decomposes
n>20: cellulose (cotton, wood, paper), mp>250C, blackens, chars,
and/or burns 

You can see that as the molecules get larger, the melting points keep
getting higher. But their threshold temperatures for reaction with
oxygen in air are all pretty similar. As is their temperature to suffer
molecular breakdown in airless places ( i.e., wood-> carbon(charcoal)
+ water(steam) ). 

So you can see that at some point in the sequence, the melting
points will be higher than the "burning points", and you will never get
to see melting behavior. It just disintegrates instead. 

This is also related to a term: "cross-linking". Suppose you have a

pile of slimy worms. Like long-chain molecules, the pile behaves
somewhat like a liquid. If you glue each worm to two neighbors, what
you have is longer worms. A thicker liquid. But if you glue each worm
to three different neighbors, then it is all one big knot or web or
lattice. And the permanent sense of shape inherent to a solid is born. 

In any "cross-linked" substance, these glue-spots are made of

molecular bonds, just like the rest of the molecule. So it is no longer
possible to separate the solid bulk cleanly into separate molecules.
Some irreversible chemical breakdown would have to occur first.
Several un-meltable "thermosetting" plastics are in this category.
Cellulose can be a cross-linked substance. One might think of
cellulose as the carbon polymer (plastic) most closely related to
water. 

Jim Swenson 

Ceramic Structures (continued)

Ceramic Glass 
Ceramics with an entirely glassy structure have certain properties that are
quite different from those of metals. Recall that when metal in the liquid
state is cooled, a crystalline solid precipitates when the melting freezing
point is reached. However, with a glassy material, as the liquid is cooled it
becomes more and more viscous. There is no sharp melting or freezing
point. It goes from liquid to a soft plastic solid and finally becomes hard and
brittle. Because of this unique property, it can be blown into shapes, in
addition to being cast, rolled, drawn and otherwise processed like a metal.

Glassy behavior is related to the atomic structure of the material. If pure

silica (SiO2) is fused together, a glass called vitreous silica is formed on
cooling. The basic unit structure of this glass is the silica tetrahedron, which
is composed of a single silicon atom surrounded by four equidistant oxygen
atoms. The silicon atoms occupy the openings (interstitials) between the
oxygen atoms and share four valence electrons with the oxygen atoms
through covalent bonding. The silica atom has four valence electrons and
each of the oxygen atoms has two valence electrons so the silica tetrahedron
has four extra valence electrons to share with adjacent tetrahedral. The
silicate structures can link together by sharing the atoms in two corners of
the SiO2 tetrahedrons, forming chain or ring structures. A network of silica
tetrahedral chains form, and at high temperatures these chains easily slide
past each other. As the melt cools, thermal vibrational energy decreases and
the chains can not move as easily so the structure becomes more rigid. Silica
is the most important constituent of glass, but other oxides are added to
change certain physical characteristics or to lower the melting point.

Ceramic Crystalline or Partially Crystalline Material

Most ceramics usually contain both metallic and nonmetallic elements with
ionic or covalent bonds. Therefore, the structure the metallic atoms, the
structure of the nonmetallic atoms, and the balance of charges produced by
the valence electrons must be considered. As with metals, the unit cell is
used in describing the atomic structure of ceramics. The cubic and the
hexagonal cells are most common. Additionally, the difference in radii
between the metallic and nonmetallic ions plays an important role in the
arrangement of the unit cell.

In metals, the regular arrangement of atoms into densely packed planes led
to the occurrence of slip under stress, which gives metal their characteristic
ductility. In ceramics, brittle fracture rather than slip is common because
both the arrangement of the atoms and the type of bonding is different. The
fracture or cleavage planes of ceramics are the result of planes of regularly
arranged atoms.

The building criteria for the crystal structure are:

 maintain neutrality
 charge balance dictates chemical formula
 achieve closest packing

A few of the different types of ceramic materials outside of the glass family
are described below.

Silicate Ceramics
As mentioned previously, the silica structure
is the basic structure for many ceramics, as
well as glass. It has an internal arrangement
consisting of pyramid (tetrahedral or four-
sided) units. Four large oxygen (0) atoms
surround each smaller silicon (Si) atom.
When silica tetrahedrons share three corner
atoms, they produce layered silicates (talc,
kaolinite clay, mica). Clay is the basic raw
material for many building products such as
brick and tile. When silica tetrahedrons
share four comer atoms, they produce framework silicates (quartz,
tridymite). Quartz is formed when the tetrahedra in this material are
arranged in a regular, orderly fashion. If silica in the molten state is cooled
very slowly it crystallizes at the freezing point. But if molten silica is cooled
more rapidly, the resulting solid is a disorderly arrangement which is glass.

Cement
Cement (Portland cement) is one of the main ingredients of concrete. There
are a number of different grades of cement but a typical Portland cement
will contain 19 to 25% SiO2 , 5 to 9% Al2O3, 60 to 64% CaO and 2 to 4%
FeO. Cements are prepared by grinding the clays and limestone in proper
proportion, firing in a kiln, and regrinding. When water is added, the
minerals either decompose or combine with water, and a new phase grows
throughout the mass. The reaction is solution, recrystallization, and
precipitation of a silicate structure. It is usually important to control the
amount of water to prevent an excess that would not be part of the structure
and would weaken it. The heat of hydration (heat of reaction in the
adsorption of water) in setting of the cement can be large and can cause
damage in large structures.

Nitride Ceramics
Nitrides combine the superior hardness of
ceramics with high thermal and mechanical
stability, making them suitable for
applications as cutting tools, wear-resistant
parts and structural components at high
temperatures. TiN has a cubic structure
which is perhaps the simplest and best
known of structure types. Cations and
anions both lie at the nodes of separate fcc
lattices. The structure is unchanged if the Ti
and N atoms (lattices) are interchanged.

Ferroelectric Ceramics
Depending on the crystal structure, in some
crystal lattices, the centers of the positive
and negative charges do not coincide even
without the application of external electric
field. In this case, it is said that there exists
spontaneous polarization in the crystal.
When the polarization of the dielectric can
be altered by an electric field, it is called
ferroelectric. A typical ceramic ferroelectric
is barium titanate, BaTiO3. Ferroelectric
materials, especially polycrystalline
ceramics, are very promising for varieties of application fields such as
piezoelectric/electrostrictive transducers, and electrooptic.

Phase Diagram
The phase diagram is important in understanding the formation and control
of the microstructure of the microstructure of polyphase ceramics, just as it
is with polyphase metallic materials. Also, nonequilibrium structures are
even more prevalent in ceramics because the more complex crystal
structures are more difficult to nucleate and to grow from the melt.
 Imperfections in Ceramics
Imperfections in ceramic crystals include point
defects and impurities like in metals. However, in
ceramics defect formation is strongly affected by
the condition of charge neutrality because the
creation of areas of unbalanced charges requires
an expenditure of a large amount of energy. In
ionic crystals, charge neutrality often results in
defects that come as pairs of ions with opposite charge or several nearby
point defects in which the sum of all charges is zero. Charge neutral defects
include the Frenkel and Schottky defects. A Frenkel-defect occurs when a
host atom moves into a nearby interstitial position to create a vacancy-
interstitial pair of cations. A Schottky-defect is a pair of nearby cation and
anion vacancies. Schottky defect occurs when a host atom leaves its position
and moves to the surface creating a vacancy-vacancy pair.

Sometimes, the composition may alter slightly to arrive at a more balanced

atomic charge. Solids such as SiO2, which have a well-defined chemical
formula, are called stoichiometric compounds. When the composition of a
solid deviates from the standard chemical formula, the resulting solid is said
to be nonstoichiometric. Nonstoichiometry and the existence of point
defects in a solid are often closely related. Anion vacancies are the source of
the nonstoichiometry in SiO2-x,

Introduction of impurity atoms in the lattice is likely in conditions where the

charge is maintained. This is the case of electronegative impurities that
substitute a lattice anion or electropositive substitutional impurities. This is
more likely for similar ionic radii since this minimizes the energy required
for lattice distortion. Defects will appear if the charge of the impurities is not
balanced.