Topping Mother Nature, lab makes petrified wood in days

Researchers at a national science laboratory in south-central Washington have found a way to achieve in days what takes Mother Nature millions of years — converting wood to mineral.

The ability to make petrified wood could hold promise for separating industrial chemicals, filtering pollutants and soaking up contamination, said Yongsoon Shin, research scientist at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.

"Wood petrified is very hard and very porous material — it’s not really a wood component," Shin said Monday in a telephone interview. As a mineral product, petrified wood has a large, hard surface and a porous inside, making it ideal to soak up or separate substances or act as a catalyst in other processes, he said.

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