Degradation by-products of ancient paper leaves from wash waters

Maddalena Bronzato (1) , Paolo Calvini (2) , Carlo Federici (3) , Anne-Laurence Dupont (4) , Moreno Meneghetti (1) , Valerio Di Marco (1) , Barbara Biondi (1) , Alfonso Zoleo (1)

1 Dipartemento di Scienze Chimiche
2 Istituto per la Tutela delle Opere Grafiche (ITOG)
3 Dipartimento di Studi Umanistici
4 CRCC - Centre de Recherche pour la Conservation des Collections

Water cleaning of paper leaves is a preliminary step in many customary deacidification treatments of ancient books in conservation workshops. Usually, the washing solutions are considered “waste waters” and they are thrown away. In this work, an analytical protocol for the analysis of wash waters for the assessment of the conservation state of ancient books is proposed. Wash waters of leaves under different conservation conditions of a 16th-century- rinted book were investigated using UV-Vis, IR, Raman, NMR, EPR, XRF, ESI-MS, ICP-MS, CE-PDA and elemental microanalysis. Analysis of the wash water extracts allowed one to identify a large number of degradation by-products, ranging from low-molecular mass organic acids to cellulose oligomers. Reasons for the very different conservation conditions of the leaves emerged, indicating that wash water analysis provides a deep insight into the conservation state and composition of leaves as well as degradation reactions occurred on them

Mots clés: degradation; chemical analysis; conservation; graphic art

Domaines: Chimie analytique; Art et histoire de l'art

Maddalena Bronzato, Paolo Calvini, Carlo Federici, Anne-Laurence Dupont, Moreno Meneghetti, et al.. Degradation by-products of ancient paper leaves from wash waters. Analytical Methods, 2015, 7 pp.8197-8205. ⟨10.1039/C5AY01114K⟩. ⟨hal-01490972⟩