A simple VOC prioritization method to determine ventilation rate for indoor environment based on building material emissions

摘要

Building material emissions could be the major indoor air pollution source in low-occupant-density spaces, e.g., a private office. Lowest Concentration of Interest (LCI) schemes can be used to predict ventilation requirements based on building material emissions. However, it is not practical to obtain emission information on hundreds of chemicals with LCIs. 28 building materials selected from the NRC database were subjected to emission modelling, resulting in 101 VOCs as a starting VOC pool. A method was proposed to generate VOC priority lists. Three priority lists were obtained based on three LCI schemes, i.e., AFSSET, AgBB and EU-LCI, and each consisted of 17 - 21 VOCs, i.e., about 10% of the total substances in the schemes. This paper demonstrated the role of indoor VOCs in determining ventilation requirements and illustrated a way to predict the ventilation rate based on a simplified list of VOCs.