Assessment of an experimental method for determining the three key parameters of VOC emissions from solid materials

Abstract

The VOC emission processes from a solid material can be described by three key parameters: the partition coefficient (K), the initial emittable concentration (C0) and, the diffusion coefficient (D). These emission key parameters need to be determined experimentally for a VOC-material pair. A new method from literature allows determining simultaneously the three emission key parameters. However, this method has been evaluated in a single experiment only for formaldehyde. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to assess the efficiency and the reproducibility of the experimental method from literature performing three tests in the same experimental conditions. This work permits to determine the three key parameters of eight main VOC emitted from a particleboard and to evaluate the accuracy of the experimental method. Successfully, experiments carried out using a 128 L well-mixed chamber containing a particleboard, and connected to an online gas analyzer (Selected Ion Flow Tube-Mass Spectrometry), allow the effective characterization of the source material. Results evidence that compared to other VOCs, formaldehyde shows a specific behaviour: the response of formaldehyde between airtight and ventilated regimes is highly contrasted with those of other emitted VOCs.