Assessing the shelf-life of a prototype reference material for product emissions testing

Published

May 2, 2011

Author(s)

Cynthia H. Reed, Daniel V. Samarov, Dennis D. Leber, Zhe Liu, John Little

Abstract

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and Virginia Tech (VT) are developing a volatile organic compound (VOC) reference material to validate product emissions chamber testing. To verify the storage method of the material and determine its potential shelf-life, a series of tests was completed to measure the film’s emission rates after storage times of up to 6 months. The emission rate of toluene was measured from each film in a 50 L stainless steel chamber after storage times of 1 day, 13 days, 23 days, 41 days, 62 days, 104 days, 139 days, and 181 days. Although an inverse relationship between material sample age and toluene emission rate was observed at 2 h and 24 h, the difference in the amount of toluene emitted from each of the different aged samples becomes less evident and eventually statistically indistinguishable at 48 h and beyond.

Proceedings Title

The 12th International Conference on Indoor Air Quality and Climate

Conference Dates

June 5-10, 2011

Conference Location

Austin, TX

Conference Title

Indoor Air 2011- International Society of Indoor Air Quality and Climate

Pub Type

Conferences

Download Paper

Local Download

Keywords

Volatile organic compounds, test method validation, product certification

Citation

Reed, C. , Samarov, D. , Leber, D. , Liu, Z. and Little, J. (2011), Assessing the shelf-life of a prototype reference material for product emissions testing, The 12th International Conference on Indoor Air Quality and Climate, Austin, TX, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=907787 (Accessed October 10, 2025)