Materials emissions testing

Wolkoff, P., Salthammer, T. and Woolfenden, E. (2005) Emission cells and comparison to small chambers for materials emission testing. Gefahrstojfe-Reinhaltung der Lufi, 65, 93-8. 

Materials Emissions Testing A Challenge for Method Standardization... 

Standardized Methods for Testing Emissions of Organic Vapors Table 6.1 List of prominent standard material emissions test methods and protocols. 

For emissions testing to be accepted as a meaningful and necessary part of product quality assessment, relevant test methods must ensure acceptable uncertainty. Any associated products standards, incorporating pass/fail criteria, must also take into account the actual uncertainty of the standard methods specified. A relatively detailed summary of some of the major potential causes of error in the multistep materials emissions testing process is presented later in this chapter (see Section 6.6.2). For an emissions test standard/protocol to be robust and useful, it must take into account all of these issues and include sufficient guidance to ensure that a competent laboratory can achieve results within the expected uncertainty limits. 

Table 6.2 Conditions for material emissions testing using chambers or cells.

Conventional materials emissions test methods are usually carried out using small test chambers or cells with samples prepared and presented to the air flow within the chamber/cell as they would be to room air in real use. Operating parameters (temperature, humidity, etc.) are selected to simulate the indoor environment and are summarized in Table 6.2. 

Harmonization, simplification and validation of relevant standard test methods/ protocols are all essential steps if emissions testing is to become as widespread as regulators and consumers desire, without burdening industry with unjustified extra cost. Failure to achieve this could reduce confidence in materials emissions testing generally and thus undermine the overall objective. It could also jeopardize... 

Wolkoff P. and Nielsen P.A. (1996) A new approach for indoor climate labeling of building materials-Emission testing, modeling and comfort evaluation. Atmos. Environ., 30, 2679-2689. 

For sampling of VOCs from material emissions the Tenax sorbent tubes have shown to be the most versatile and widely used in Emope (Tirkkonen et al., 1995). Methods based on using Tenax sorbent in collecting VOCs from material emission test chambers and indoor air are drafted in ISO TC 146 SC/6. 

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