There are no nanodroplets of water in wet oil-impregnated pressboard

Excerpt

Żukowski et al. (2015) interpreted the results of their measurements of DC conductivity of oil-impregnated pressboard containing variable amounts of water in terms of water nanodroplets, about 2 nm in diameter allegedly present in their system. They repeated such an allegation in a series of papers, including their recent paper in Cellulose (Żukowski et al. 2019) and a few papers in other journals cited therein. They do not show any direct evidence for existence of such water nanodroplets. The only explanation offered by Żukowski et al. is that “water virtually does not dissolve in oil “. Many scientific papers report on interactions of water with cellulose or with cellulose-based products using various techniques, but none of these papers (except for the aforementioned papers by Żukowski et al.) reports on water nanodroplets in such systems. …