PRELIMINARY STUDY OF WOOD SPECIES IDENTIFICATION BY NIR SPECTROSCOPY

A method for determination of hardwood wood species in chips form by NIR reflectance spectroscopy has been investigated. A series of measurements on chips from seven wood species (beech, acacia, hornbeam, ash-tree, aspen, birch and cherry) with various, controlled amounts of moisture, has been carried out and the spectra were subjected to discriminant analysis (PCA). Wet wood chips had higher rates of successful identification as compared to dry wood chips, probably due to significant variation of moisture content from species to species rather than minute differences in chemical composition. Acacia, birch, hornbeam and aspen were identified with high accuracy. Low identification accuracy has been observed with cherry and ash-tree. The predicted versus actual relationship for all tested wood species is linear with a coefficient of determination R(2)=0,8054.