A parsimonious model for the release of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) encapsulated in products

Abstract

Abstract Studies have demonstrated that near-field chemical intakes may exceed environmentally mediated exposures and are therefore essential to be considered when assessing chemical emissions across a product's life cycle. VOCs encapsulated in materials/products can be a major emission source in the use phase. Previous models describing such emissions require complex analytical or numerical solutions, which poses a great computational burden and lack transparency for use in high-throughput screening of chemicals. In the present study, we adapted a model which describes VOC emissions from building materials and subsequent removal by ventilation, and decoupled the material and air governing equations by assuming a pseudo-steady-state between emission and loss. Results of this decoupled model show good agreement with the original more complex model and the experimental data. The solution of this decoupled model for mass fraction emitted, which still consists of an infinite sum of exponential terms, is further reduced to a sum of only two exponentials with parameters which can be predicted from physiochemical properties using explicit equations. Results of this simple two-exponential model agree well with the original full model over a 15-year time period with R-square greater than 0.99 for a wide range of compounds and material thicknesses. Moreover, the chemical concentration at the material surface can be simply calculated from the derivative of this two-exponential model, which also agrees well with the surface concentration calculated using the original full model. The present parsimonious approach greatly reduces the computational burden, and can be easily implemented for high-throughput screening.