A numerical model predicting indoor volatile organic compound Volatile Organic Compounds emissions from multiple building materials.

Abstract

There have been many studies on the model of volatile organic compound (VOC) emissions from individual dry building material and have been validated in the chamber. Actually, VOC emitted from multiple dry building materials simultaneously indoor. The concentration of VOC indoor increases and will inhibit the VOC emission of dry building materials indoor. This paper developed a new model predicting indoor VOC concentrations caused by simultaneous emissions from multiple dry building materials, with a consideration of impact from dynamic VOC concentrations on the emission rate. The model has been used to predict the VOC emissions from a combination of medium-density fiberboard (MDF) and consolidated compound floor (CCF) simultaneously. The study demonstrated a good prediction performance of the newly proposed model, against field experimental data. The study also showed that when multiple dry building materials emit pollutants in a common space, a mutual inhibition effect could be observed. Furthermore, when multiple dry building materials emit VOC simultaneously, the change of VOC concentrations in the air followed the trends of VOC emissions from building materials with higher initial concentration (C0), diffusion coefficient (Dm), and the partition coefficient (Kma).