Bacterial degrade of wood

Bacterial degradation of wood generally is not a serious problem, although in some situations of extreme wetness, bacteria may increase the permeabihty of wood after many years or reduce the strength of the wood (58). 

Bacterial attack is an early stage in the degradation of wood exposed in wet or moist conditions. Bacteria can be the dominant form of attack when fungal decay is suppressed by a wood-preserving treatment. Bacteria can attack the cell wall of wood by tunnelling, cavitation or erosion mechanisms (Eaton and Hale, 1993). 

Bacterial degradation of waterlogged archeological wood and foundation piles under low-oxygen conditions resulted in increased lignin content [177]. This... 

The direct extraction and reuse of the metals from treated wood has been proposed. These include acid extraction, fungal degradation, bacterial degradation, digestion, steam explosion, or some combination of these techniques. All of these approaches show some potential, but none are currently economic (Helsen and Van den Belk, 2005). 

Cell-Wall-Degrading Bacteria. The classification of bacterial decay types is based on the micromorphology of attack. Three main types of bacterial attack have been described so far through microscopy erosion, tunneling, and cavitation. They have been named after specific characteristics of the attack. Observations suggest that further forms of attack await description. Several other decay patterns of wood cells are suspected of being caused by bacteria, but no definite evidence is available. 

Environmental Factors. Very little is known about the influence of different environmental factors on bacterial decay. Boutelje and Goransson (101) reported that the degradation of foundation wood piles increased with increased nitrogen and phosphorus. Attack by tunneling bacteria in wood exposed in soil appears to be most frequently found in very fertile soils. 

Findings of bacterial attack in wood exposed at the bottom of the Baltic Sea suggest that active degradation occurs at rather low temperatures. Tunneling bacteria in laboratory experiments have been found to attack wood at 40°C but not at 45°C. A different form of bacterial attack was observed at 70°C. 

Chloroform in drinking water may be aerobically biodegraded to carbon dioxide (Speitel et al. 1989). Bacterial cultures from contaminated sites produced efficient degradation of chlorinated hydrocarbons in laboratory-scale continuous-flow reactors (Kaestner 1989). Woods and coworkers... 

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