Can Wood Melt?

Wood mainly consists of water, lignin, and cellulose. Once a piece of wood catches fire, the first process is boiling of the water content, followed by the cellulose and the lignin and cellulose reacting with environmental oxygen and burn. Even if the wood is burned in a vacuum, complex bonds are bonded with the molecular chains.

In fact, the molecules dissolve into organic compounds and methane which contain hydrogen and carbon. We expect that when a substance melts, the chemical makeup should remain the same. For instance, both water and ice are chemically H2O. But in the case of wood, heating wood undergoes oxidization before it will melt.

Wood is made up of long-chain organic molecules which can decompose into products like water, charcoal, carbon dioxide, and methanol upon heating. The wood’s physical structure is destroyed during the process, so the resulting material will not return to the original matter. Because of this irreversible chemical breakdown of its components, wood doesn’t melt.

The melting point of carbon is 3500 degrees Celsius. If it is possible to lower this temperature, the wood can possibly melt. While there are facilities capable of creating these conditions, there is no documented or published literature to back up this hypothesis. Thus, until there is a proven test and science indicates that it’s possible to melt wood, the answer to the question, “Can wood melt?”, the answer will always remain a no.

The melting point refers to crystalline materials. However, cellulose decomposes around 250 degrees Celsius and continues to decompose until it reaches 500 degrees Celsius. After which, it undergoes carbon pyrolysis by about 900 to 1000 degrees Celsius, thus no almost no other crystalline phase in wood that could be practically melted.