A variable volume loading method to determine the initial emittable concentration of VOC and formaldehyde in building materials

The initial emittable VOC and formaldehyde concentration in building materials is a key parameter for characterizing and classifying these materials. This paper proposes a novel variable volume loading (VVL) method to determine this parameter. For the method, variable volumes of the material are put in an airtight chamber separately and perform emission process until equilibrium for each volume, and repeated experiments are performed to reduce measurement error. The presented method has the following features: (a) test the samples under practical conditions; (b) convenient for routine measurements; and (c) require short experimental time. The initial emittable concentrations of formaldehyde, propanal and hexanal in one kind of medium density fiberboard have been measured. In addition, it is found that the ratios of the measured formaldehyde concentration obtained via this method are less than 10% from that using the perforator method, as recommended in the Chinese National Standard.