The vacuum-assisted microwave drying of round bamboos: Drying kinetics, color and mechanical property

Abstract Round bamboos hold great promise for replacing wood as structural materials due to their easy large-scale cultivation, rapid growth, high strength and high toughness. However, rapid drying of round bamboo with good quality remains a key challenge. Here, vacuum-assisted microwave drying (VMD) technology is firstly applied to dry round bamboo. It only takes ∼150 min to reduce the moisture content of bamboo to ∼10%. The resulting dried bamboos not only have a smooth surface, superior gloss, uniform golden color and few striking defects, but also show good mechanical performance. Moreover, few splitting, cracking, even “Firecrackers” occur during the drying process, which could not be avoided by conventional drying method. Thus, VMD technology shows a great potential application in drying round bamboo in industry.