Research progress and consideration of VOC pollution control in healthy buildings in China

Abstract

In China, VOC pollution in indoor air is quite serious, and the control of VOC concentration in indoor air has always been a difficult problem. It is also an important control target of healthy buildings in China, since VOC has significant health hazards to human body. This paper introduces the definition and source of volatile organic compounds in indoor air, analyses the present situation of pollution and expounds the human hazards of VOC. There are differences between VOC control indexes in China and other countries in terms of indoor air quality standards. In the future revision of standards, health needs, industry status and implement ability should be fully considered. There are three ways to control indoor VOC pollution: Source control, ventilation dilution and air purification. Source control is the most fundamental way to avoid indoor air pollution. The identification of “health performance” of building materials and furniture products will be the main development direction. The main idea of control is “release rate” instead of “content” control method. For high-risk substances, developing alternative products is the most direct solution, but this method depends on technological progress. Diluting indoor air pollutants with outdoor fresh air is the most convenient way to reduce VOC concentration. How to achieve precise ventilation according to the emission characteristics of pollution sources will be the main task of ventilation research in healthy buildings. Air purification is an indispensable means of controlling indoor air pollution in modern buildings. With the standard limit of VOC concentration in indoor environment getting lower and lower, the application of air purification technology will be more and more widely. High CADR, high CCM, low resistance and no secondary pollution will become the main development direction. Since 2017, JGJ/T 436-2018 ( Technical Standard for Interior Decoration Pollution Control of Residential Buildings ) and JGJ/T 461-2019 ( Design Standard for Controlling Indoor Air Quality of Public Building ) have been released successively. They fill in the standard gap in the architectural design stage, and require architectural designers to systematically consider the guarantee of indoor air quality. These two standards play an important role in promoting the promotion of healthy building. GB 50325 ( code for Indoor Environmental Pollution Control of Civil Building Engineering ) and GB/T 18883 ( Indoor Air Quality Standard ) are still the two most commonly used evaluation standards in building indoor air quality control in China. When these two standards are implemented, they all tend to adopt the instantaneous evaluation method, that is, to use the concentration data of a certain day for conformity evaluation. Therefore, how to evaluate the long-term total exposure risk of VOC is also one of the important problems in the future. VOC control in building indoor air in China can be roughly divided into three stages: The first stage focuses on product control, the second stage focuses on engineering control, and the third stage focuses on human exposure. In the future, with the implementation of health buildings evaluation standards in China, the number of indoor air quality indicators will be more and more, the limits will be more and more stringent, and the corresponding solutions will be constantly changing. How to systematically control VOC will become a major challenge in healthy buildings.