Indoor Air Pollution: Study of Trichloroethylene Transport through Soil and Basement

摘要

This study is part of a French nationwide project (ANR Fluxobat 2009) aimed to establish a solid procedure to determine the possible amount of pollutant in the air of a construction built above a contaminated field. The local study focuses on a laboratory scale problem: transfer of gaseous trichloroethylene (TCE) through sand and concrete. Three aspects are developed: simple analytical resolution which gives an exact solution applicable to various sites; numerical modelling which allows to determinate the impact of different factors as pressure gradient, permeability, porosity, etc. on the pollutant transfer; and finally experimental devices (columns, cells, and two-bulb method) which have been established in order to measure the transfer and the parameters governing this problem (diffusion coefficients, tortuosity, permeability…). The results coming from these different approaches reveal the important impact of pressure gradient (created by the presence of a building) on the amount of pollutant that transfers into the indoor air.