Determination of Emission of 19 Volatile Organic Compounds from Furniture by Climate Chamber-Thermal Desorption-Gas Chromatography

A 1 m³ climate chamber and the following climate conditions were chosen as the practical environmental conditions for simulating testing for using of furnitures:① temperature was (23±2)℃; ② relative humidity was (45±5)%; ③ rate of air replacement was based on actual rate of volumetric loading of samples and standard rate of volumetric loading (0.15 m³·m^-3). Tenax TA absorption tubes after aging were used for absorption of the air samples by connection of its one end to the climate chamber and the other end to the air sampler. The sampling was carried out under air flow-rate of 0.50 L·min^-1 for a sampling time of 20 min. A blank sample of air in the climate chamber was taken first, and then the testing furniture was place in quickly and the chamber door was closed immediately. And thence, air samples from the chamber were collected at the time intervals of 1, 2, 4, 8, 12, 24, 28, 30, 48, 52, 56, 72 h in succession. The adsorption tubes with adsorbed air samples were placed into the instrument of gas chromatography with thermal desorption device, and 19 VOCs (including benzene, toluene, acetone, 2-nonanone, etc.) in the samples were determined under the prescribed instrumental conditions. Mass of the 19 VOCs in the range of 0.100 to 2.000 mg were found to keep linear relationship with the values of relative chromatographic peak areas, with their detection limits (3s) in the range of 0.21 to 0.92 μg·m^-3. Recovery was tested by standard additions, giving results ranged from 90.0% to 122%. Values of RSDs (n=6) found for the 19 VOCs were in the range of 1.0% to 3.9%. As shown by the testing results, for various kinds of furnitures under the using conditions, amounts of VOCs liberated were higher and decreased fastly in the early stange of using, then the amounts liberated were decreased slowly and finally attained to an equilibrium condition in the later stage.