Standard Formaldehyde Source for Chamber Testing of Material Emissions: Modeling and Preliminary Tests

Published

February 1, 2013

Author(s)

Wenjuan Wei, Cynthia H. Reed, Andrew K. Persily, Yinping Zhang

Abstract

Formaldehyde is recognized as a harmful indoor air pollutant for human health (IARC. 2004) and is emitted from building materials, including urea-formaldehyde resin in pressed wood products. Environmental chambers are typically used to measure formaldehyde emission rates from these products. However, there is no formaldehyde standard reference emissions source available to assess the overall performance of these chambers. In this paper, the development of a LIFE (liquid-inner tube diffusion-film-emission) formaldehyde reference is described. A similar LIFE reference was previously developed for toluene (Wei et al. 2012). The formaldehyde source consists of a Teflon container that holds a 16 % formaldehyde-water solution. There is a small hole in the container lid that is covered with a thin polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) film.

Proceedings Title

Healthy Buildings 2012 Conference

Conference Dates

July 8-12, 2012

Conference Location

Brisbane

Pub Type

Conferences

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Keywords

formaldehyde, reference material, chamber, indoor air quality

Citation

Wei, W. , Reed, C. , Persily, A. and Zhang, Y. (2013), Standard Formaldehyde Source for Chamber Testing of Material Emissions: Modeling and Preliminary Tests, Healthy Buildings 2012 Conference, Brisbane, -1, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=910752 (Accessed October 11, 2025)