Long-term emission characteristics of VOCs from building materials

Abstract

Long-term emission behaviors of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) from indoor buildings materials heavily depend on the value of three key parameters (initial concentration C₀, diffusion coefficient D_m, partition coefficient K) that govern emissions over time. We made the first attempt to quantitatively explore the variation of parameters through a long-lasting aging test that simulates natural indoor exposure. Over a span of 431 days, we obtained a substantial dataset consisting of ten thousand data points. The parameters of six VOCs (formaldehyde, benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, o-xylene, p-m-xylene) from three kinds of wood-based boards with different aging intervals were determined. Our findings demonstrate that C₀ decreases exponentially with aging time, while D_m and K merely fluctuate with it. With the obtained correlations, ventilation time for renovated house is proposed to meet the WHO standard. These results lay the groundwork for predicting long-term indoor VOC concentrations, which is crucial for indoor air quality pre-evaluation.