A Preliminary Study of a Method to Measure SVOCs Emitted from Electrical Appliances

Abstract

Some types of Semi-Volatile Organic Compounds (SVOCs) that are emitted from plastics used in building materials and household appliances have associated health risks, even at low concentrations. In this study, we proposed a means of determining SVOC emissions for full-scale electrical appliances using the purging flow rate (PFR) -the relationship between the emission rate and concentration. The measurement point used to measure SVOCs was located in the downstream section of the flow. The predicted emission rates for toluene and Di-2-ethylhexyl phthalate from a liquid crystal display television (LCD TV) were 29.87 µg/m 2 ·h and 0.47 µg/m 2 ·h, which equates to the compounds measured from a piece of LCD TV using the micro test chamber method. Results demonstrate that the proposed test method is expected to have practical applications for determining SVOC emissions. However, the PFR simulated by computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis was substantially dependent on the CFD analysis boundary conditions in terms of the turbulence intensity or the length scale. In order to measure SVOC emission rates, it is preferable to use an experimental PFR even though CFD analysis is useful for selecting the measurement point by exampling the distribution of the PFR.