A framework and experimental study of an improved VOC/formaldehyde emission reference for environmental chamber tests

Environmental chamber systems are usually employed in the testing of volatile organic compound (VOC) and formaldehyde emissions from building materials. The measurement accuracy of environmental chamber systems can be evaluated by VOC/formaldehyde emission references. However, the available VOC/formaldehyde emission references all have some limitations for applications to various scales of chambers. A framework for designing and using a target VOC/formaldehyde emission references to evaluate the performance of chamber systems for measuring VOC/formaldehyde emissions from building materials is studied. Liquid-inner tube diffusion-film-emission (LIFE) reference is improved in this study to meet the requirements of a target VOC/formaldehyde emission reference, such as reliability, similarity as building materials, efficiency for measurement. Equivalent emission characteristic parameters are designed for a toluene LIFE reference to perform similar to a building material. Chamber test of the LIFE reference is made in a 30 m3 stainless steel ventilated environmental chamber at 23 ± 1 °C and 50 ± 5% relative humidity. The experimental data match the predictions using LIFE emission model as well as building material emission model. The improvement of the LIFE reference enables its application for the evaluation of the performance of all kinds of environmental chambers as a general reference in tests of VOCs/formaldehyde emissions from building materials.