Researchers look at tracking timber through its scent

The Associated Press

CORVALLIS, Ore. — Timber researchers hope to create wood sniffers that could track lumber from forest to front-room furniture the way bloodhounds track criminals — by their scent.

The devices are still in the imagination of their developers. They could allow the timber industry to certify that individual products come from woods managed in an environmentally sound way. They could make it harder to move pirated logs, reducing theft and illegal logging. Or they could help the industry be better at marketing and management.

Glen Murphy, a forest-engineering professor at Oregon State University, says he envisions an electronic "wood hound." Lumber would be tagged with scents such as the three perfumery chemicals he's been using on wood samples from cedar, ponderosa pine and hemlock trees.

So far, the $8,000 device he's using can track one distinct scent, but it can't deal with combinations of more.

Five years from now, Murphy hopes to be able to track 25 aromas in various combinations. That would allow timber trackers to tag more than 33 million logs with a unique scent for each, he said.

"Ideally, we want to track from standing tree to piece of wood on a desk," he said. "That's where we want to go. A smell is like a fingerprint."

The industry now uses metal staples or plastic tags that play hob with pulp mill and sawmill machinery. The alternative is radio-frequency tags, which are expensive.

"One of the challenges the forestry industry faces is being able to track products through the supply chain," Murphy said.

Murphy has been exploring the possibility since 2000. Along with Robert Franich from the New Zealand Forest Research Institute, Murphy published a study in the February 2004 issue of Forest Products Journal exploring the idea.

Each year 1.5 billion cubic meters of timber are harvested worldwide — 5 billion to 15 billion logs, Murphy said.

A truckload of about 50 logs can cost upward of $2,000, so timber manufacturers want to keep close tabs on their merchandise.

Murphy said a wood-sniffer system would have to be inexpensive and able to withstand harsh climates, difficult transportation conditions and treatments such as sawing, varnishing and staining.

Murphy is looking for grant money from the U.S. Forest Service, the Oregon Department of Forestry and private timber companies.

Some markets already use aroma tagging. The food industry relies on electronic noses to measure freshness, the medical and dental professions can use it to detect disease, and natural-gas companies find it helpful in isolating leaks.

Kevin Boston, an assistant professor of forest engineering at Oregon State University, spent several years helping manage log supplies for the largest timber company in New Zealand. He thinks aroma tagging could be helpful in eliminating some of the organizational and accounting obstacles the industry faces.

"We used to struggle with trying to attach value back to the logging unit. Having a way to identify where a log came from was a way for us to apply sophisticated accounting procedures and see where we were making money and where we weren't," Boston said.

Murphy said that scented wood that can be tracked would allow customers to identify the source of the product, in much the same way that consumers can identify some produce and meat.