A full-scale test chamber for material emission studies and indoor air quality modeling

This paper describes the major design features and construction details of a full-scale chamber test system for material emission studies and indoor air quality (IAQ) modeling. The full-scale chamber test system consists of a stainless steel room (5 by 4 by 2.75 m high) and an HVAC (heating, ventilating and air-conditioning) system with stainless steel components (e.g., fan, ducts, dampers, coils, etc.) to provide controlled temperature, humidity, airflow rate, and air flow pattern to the chamber with minimal contamination from the HVAC system itself. It also consists of a data acquisition system for monitoring and recording the test conditions, and a gas chromatography system for sampling and analyzing the volatile organic compounds emitted from tested materials/products. Four different types of air distribution were designed for the chamber to enable the simulation of realistic air flow patterns that typically exist in commercial and residential buildings. The full-scale chamber test system is useful for: (1) measuring the emission characteristics of large material samples, equipment, whole pieces of furniture, and processes of applying emission materials (e.g., painting process); (2) validating the correlations between the emission rates and environmental conditions (i.e., air temperature, humidity, velocity and turbulence level over the material surfaces) which are developed using small test chambers; (3) investigating the sink/source effect under realistic and controllable ventilation conditions; (4) developing standard procedures and methods for material emission tests using large chambers; (5) providing reliable data for validating models of room air contaminant transport; and (6) evaluating various ventilation and air cleaning strategies or devices for maintaining an acceptable indoor air quality.