Test chambers building products

Testing of Electronic Office Equipment This is a relatively new application of chamber testing and mainly applied to laser printers and hardcopy devices. In contrast to the testing of building products the available time frame is relatively short because a printing event normally proceeds within ten minutes. VOCs, ozone and particles are typically measured (see also Chapter 17). 

Emission test chamber Enclosure with controlled operational parameters for the determination of volatile organic compounds emitted from building products (ISO, 2006a). 

Standardized Emission Testing This is probably the most frequent application of test chambers and cells, because indoor related materials and products need to be evaluated for the release of volatile chemicals in order to ensure a healthy indoor climate. Many procedures have been established for different types of products. A very well-known scheme was developed by the German Committee for Health-related Evaluation of Building Products (AgBB) for the evaluation of building... 

Indoor Chemistry Various terpenes and terpenoids are emitted from household products and building materials. Ozone that has entered from outdoors or has been generated indoors can react with these compounds, either in the gas phase or on the surface of materials. The resulting oxidation products will contribute to the production and growth of meaningful quantities of secondary organic aerosols (SOA). The formation and growth of SOA can be studied under controlled conditions in test chambers (see also Chapter 13). 

ISO (2006a) 16000-9. Indoor Air-Determination of the Emission of Volatile Organic Compounds from Building Products and Furnishing-Emission Test Chamber Method, International Organization for Standardization, Geneva, Switzerland. 

Preparation of test specimens from solid samples invariably requires a portion of the sample to be cut out, for example, from the middle of the original roll or sheet of material. Freshly cut edges are notoriously high emissions sources and failure to adequately seal these and exclude them from the test is a major potential source of error. (Another advantage of emission test cells versus conventional chambers is that they automatically exclude any potential edge effects in most cases.) Similarly, surface emissions testing requires the rear surface of the material (the surface that will not be exposed once the product is installed in a building) to be sealed and excluded from the test. This is always a consideration for emission test chambers but can be an issue for both cells and chambers in the case of porous or permeable materials. 

DIN EN ISO (2008) 16000-9. Indoor Air-Part 9 Determination of the emission of volatile organic compounds from building products and furnishing- Emission test chamber method, Beuth Verlag, Berlin, Germany. 

VOCEM (1998) Further development and validation test chamber method for measuring VOC emissions from building materials and products. Champs sur Marne (Marne la Vallee, VOCEM) (SMT4-VT95-2039 interlaboratory comparison report)... 

Investigation of building products using emission test chambers. 

Table 5 Examples of compounds detected in indoor air and from building products in test chambers (see also Refs. [2,35]) ...

Meininghaus R, Schauenburg H, Knoppel H (1998) Environ SciTechnol 32 1861 EN 13419-1 (2003) Building products - determination of the emission of volatile organic compounds, part 1 emission test chamber method. Beuth, Berlin... 

CEN ENV 13419 Building products - determination of emission of volatile organic compounds part 1 - emission test chamber method part 2 - emission test cell method part 3 - procedure for sampling, storage of samples and preparation of test specimens... 

Formaldehyde as a pollutant in the indoor air is usually connected with the use of formaldehyde based resins in e.g. building materials and in furniture. This article presents measurements of the formaldehyde emission from various products containing urea-formaldehyde (UF) or phenol-formaldehyde (PF) resins. The emission from all test objects have been measured in a ventilated test chamber at the standardized testing atmosphere 23 C, 50 % RH according to the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). The emission from woodbased panels and other materials have been measured at a loading factor of 1.0 m /m and at an air change rate of 1.0 h . ... 

In the future the Swedish formaldehyde rules may include other UF-bonded products as MDF-boards and the requirements also may be formulated as emission rates. On the behalf of the National Board of Physical Planning and Building, the Swedish National Testing Institute has performed a study on the emission from products bonded with formaldehyde based resin. The measurements have been performed in a ventilated test chamber at standardized climate in agreement within the work of the European Organization for Standardization, CEN. 16 West European countries are represented in CEN. 

In connection with the European Council Directive 89/106/EEC on construction products (EEC, 1989) the working group (WG) 7 of TC 264 air quality at the European standardizing organisation CEN defines general standards for environmental test chambers for the determination of VOC emissions from building products (prENV 13419-1,... 

As a member of the WG 7 the, author (Wensing, 1996) contributes to this standardization, for which important preparatory work has been published (Tichenor, 1989 ASTM 1990 Nordtest, 1990 EC, 1991 EC, 1993 EC, 1995). The future EN is going to require a certain quality standard of important parameters of a VOC emission examination of building products with environmental test chambers. Table 2.1-3 gives an overview. 

Suitable examinations have shown that emissions from building products strongly depend on the temperature (e.g. van der Wal, 1997). For the purposes of standardized examinations it is thus important to have the possibility to regulate the temperature inside the test chamber to, e.g., 23 °C, with a maximum variation of 1 K. This can be achieved by using the chamber inside an air-conditioned room (ambient air temperature = chamber air temperature), by controlling the temperature of the chamber walls or by installing a heating appliance inside the chamber. 

The classical chemical-analytical VOC examination of building products is usually carried out at 23 °C and 50 % RH. Some of the numerous possible applications of the environmental test chamber besides the classical examination are presented in the following. 

Similarly to building products, the elements of the interior furnishings of a vehicle can emit a multitude of VOCs and SVOCs. In connection with an examination of whole vehicles (see Bauhof and Wensing, Chapter 1.8) a special VOC/SVOC environmental test chamber was developed and used for the examination of single components (assignment of sources). The test chamber is 1 m in size and it consists of stainless steel. Examinations at temperatures of 65 °C and 100 °C are possible (Meyer et al., 1994 Bauhof et al., 1996). Recently, standardized test series have been developed for routine examinations of elements of cars interiors. The test series have been put into practice in laboratories, and they have been validated by means of comparative internal and external measurements (Mdhle and Wensing, 1999). 

The accuracy of any model to predict VOC concentrations in test chamber experiments mostly depends on the accuracy of the source (term ER in Eq. 1) and sink submodels (terms A and D in Eq. 1) incorporated into the lAQ model. In other words, a realistic estimate of human exposure to VOCs emitted from indoor materials and products requires knowledge not only of their emission rates but also of their adsorption/ desorption capacity or the buffer effect on VOC concentrations in indoor air. Small environmental test chambers are increasingly used in order to characterize the emission of VOCs (i.e. the source term in Eq. 1) from materials and products present indoors, whether they are used to realize the building environment, maintenance work (includ-... 

ISO TR5924 (1989). Fire Tests Reaction to lire Smoke generated by building products (dual chamber test). 

DIN4102-1 B2 Vertical sample exposed to gas flame inside test chamber flame spread and drips recorded Building products... 

Anonymous, Building products - Determination of volatile organic compounds Part 1 Emission test chamber method. prENV 13419-1, draft. 

These primers may also be tested in the "Gas Volume and Impulse Apparatus , briefly described as the "Test Set Mkl75-ModO in Ref 14, p 9-42. Its photographic view is given as Fig 9 23 (which is not shown here). The apparatus consists of a mercury reservoir, an upright capillary rube, and a firing chamber. When a primer is fired in this test set, the hot reaction products build up pressure in the firing chamber. This pressure is communicated to the upper surface of the mercury in the reservoir, and this, in turn, causes a column of mercury to rise in the capillary tube. 

Horn W., Ullrich D. andSeifertB. (1997) VOC emission from cork products for indoor use - chamber and test house measurements. Proceedings of Healthy Buildings 97, Washington, USA, Vol. 3, 533-538. 

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