Easily evaluate the emissions of all your materials
A tool for measuring material emissions
The issue of indoor air quality is gradually becoming a real public health issue.
Among the French new regulatory requirements, control of public buildings indoor air is accompanied by a research of pollution sources when the alert values are exceeded. Meanwhile, the issue of VOCs and formaldehyde material emissions (by building materials, furniture, decoration ...) is a central aspect of the management of indoor air quality. It is therefore necessary to have tools to achieve rapid and reliable assessment of material emission.
For this propose, Nobatek developed and offers DOSEC (Device for On-Site Emission Control). This tool is the result of collaboration between Nobatek, the RIME pole of the Mining School of Alès and the University of Pau [1].
Rapid and non-destructive measurement
DOSEC allows material emission characterization (flooring, walls, ceiling, wood paneling, furniture...). The sampling is made in passive mode and directly on-site. This is a completely non-destructive method. The sampling step does not require any specific technical skills and can be done by anyone who received a short training. The analyzes are then done in a laboratory by qualified staff.
During the sampling step, the sample cell is placed on the material to be analyzed. A solid-phase microextration fiber (SPME) is then introduced inside the sampler cell to extract the VOCs present at the material surface and representative of the emissions. The fiber we used is a modified fiber allowing a simultaneous sampling and analysis of VOCs and carbonyl compounds, including formaldehyde. The fiber is then sent to a laboratory for analysis by gas chromatography.
The geometry and the volume of the sample cell were optimized in order to have an optimal sensitivity and an effective on-site sampling time as short as possible. All the on-site operations can be performed in half a day.
A simple protocol to implement
Using DOSEC is simple and does not require any special technical skills. Thus, material emission samplings are fully independently made by the user.
- Upon signing the contract, the user receives a 2 hour training on the use of DOSEC and SPME fibers. He also gets the sample cells.
- When the user must perform a measurement, the modified SPME fibers are sent on request. He makes the sampling by himself and then sends us back the fibers. These are then analyzed by some qualified staff.
- An analysis report is sent to the user.
Billing is then based on the number of performed analysis.
[1] DOSEC development was made through a CIFRE PhD thesis, handled by Nobatek with the cooperation of Mining School of Alès (C2MA) and University of Pau (LaTEP).
DOSEC was developped in collaboration with RIME pole from the C2MA laboratory of the Mining School of Alès and LATEP laboratory from the University of Pau, who both have extensive experience in the field of metrology and modeling exchanges material/air.
Downloads
Presentation at the CLIMA 2013 conference, Prague, Czech Republic
« New measurement and modelling approach to evaluate and predict the impact of building materials on indoor air quality »
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