Sorption Isotherms of Acetone on Various Building Materials

Abstract

The physical modelling of Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) suffers a lack of sorption data for the most common Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC) on building materials. This paper deals with an experimental facility that aimed to provide the sorption isotherms of gaseous contaminants on various materials. It was used to determine the sorption isotherms of acetone on chipboard, acrylic paint, and the gypsum core of commercially available gypsum board. After a brief introduction to fundamental principles of sorption, the experimental device is presented in detail. The results are reported and discussed, emphasising the description of the isotherm shapes and the possible partial reversibility of the sorption phenomenon for porous materials. The resulting curves are clearly non linear when dealing with gypsum and chipboard. Moreover, the sorption isotherms of acetone on gypsum were found to be different whether they were determined in the directions of increasing or decreasing concentrations. Many questions remain unresolved about the physico-chemical processes involved, the sorption data to be considered for the purposes of IAQ modelling, and the way to account for the observed phenomenon when modelling the sorption/diffusion contaminant transport in building materials. —

Predicting emission characteristics of volatile organic compounds from wet surface coatings

“…At low concentrations, two theories produce similar results up to a volume fraction of about 0.05, on the other hand, significant deviations occur at higher volume fractions. Similar observation has been reported by Tiffonnet et al [38]. They have measured that the sorption isotherms of acetone on chipboard and gypsum board are nonlinear.…”

Simultaneous estimation of VOCs diffusion and partition coefficients in building materials via inverse analysis

“…(1) cannot properly describe the VOCs transport in very porous materials. In case porous materials are studied, multi-phase models [14,15] would be much better candidates.…”

Study of the resistances to transfer of gaseous pollutant between material and indoor air

“…It gives the instantaneous values of the local acetone concentration in the chipboard, the acetone emission mass flow rate, the acetone mass remaining in the chipboard and the chamber air concentration. The diffusion and sorption data and material properties used here, coming from previous works [2,17], are presented in Table 1.…”

“…The sorption isotherms of acetone on dry chipboard have been given at various temperatures from experimental work. Since Tiffonnet and Tiffonnet et al [2,17], C s is related to C according to the relation:…”