1. Dry air heated. This is generally obsolete. 2. Moist air. _a._ Ventilated. _b._ Forced draft. _c._ Condensing. _d._ Humidity regulated. _e._ Boiling. 3. Superheated steam.
Various methods of drying wood under pressures other than atmospheric have been tried. Only a brief mention of this subject will be made. Where the apparatus is available probably the quickest way to dry wood is first to heat it in saturated steam at as high a temperature as the species can endure without serious chemical change until the heat has penetrated to the center, then follow this with a vacuum.
By this means the self-contained specific heat of the wood and the water is made available for the evaporation, and the drying takes place from the inside outwardly, just the reverse of that which occurs by drying by means of external heat.
When the specimen has cooled this process is then to be repeated until it has dried down to fibre-saturation point. It cannot be dried much below this point by this method, since the absorption during the heating operation will then equal the evaporation during the cooling. It may be carried further, however, by heating in partially humidified air, proportioning the relative humidity each time it is heated to the degree of moisture present in the wood.
The point to be considered in this operation is that during the heating process no evaporation shall be allowed to take place, but only during the cooling. In this way surface drying and "case-hardening" are prevented since the heat is from within and the moisture passes from the inside outwardly. However, with some species, notably oak, surface cracks appear as a network of fine checks along the medullary rays.
In the first place, it should be borne in mind that it is the heat which produces evaporation and not the air nor any mysterious property assigned to a "vacuum."
For every pound of water evaporated at ordinary temperatures approximately 1,000 British thermal units of heat are used up, or "become latent," as it is called. This is true whether the evaporation takes place in a vacuum or under a moderate air pressure. If this heat is not supplied from an outside source it must be supplied by the water itself (or the material being dried), the temperature of which will consequently fall until the surrounding space becomes saturated with vapor at a pressure corresponding to the temperature which the water has reached; evaporation will then cease. The pressure of the vapor in a space saturated with water vapor increases rapidly with increase of temperature. At a so-called vacuum of 28 inches, which is about the limit in commercial operations, and in reality signifies an actual pressure of 2 inches of mercury column, the space will be saturated with vapor at 101 degrees Fahrenheit. Consequently, no evaporation will take place in such a vacuum unless the water be warmer than 101 degrees Fahrenheit, provided there is no air leakage. The qualification in regard to air is necessary, for the sake of exactness, for the following reason: In any given space the total actual pressure is made up of the combined pressures of all the gases present. If the total pressure ("vacuum") is 2 inches, and there is no air present, it is all produced by the water vapor (which saturates the space at 101 degrees Fahrenheit); but if some air is present and the total pressure is still maintained at 2 inches, then there must be less vapor present, since the air is producing part of the pressure and the space is no longer saturated at the given temperature. Consequently further evaporation may occur, with a corresponding lowering of the temperature of the water, until a balance is again reached. Without further explanation it is easy to see that but little water can be evaporated by a vacuum alone without addition of heat, and that the prevalent idea that a vacuum can of itself produce evaporation is a fallacy. If heat be supplied to the water, however, either by conduction or radiation, evaporation will take place in direct proportion to the amount of heat supplied, so long as the pressure is kept down by the vacuum pump.